If any of the System Icons such as the Speaker, Network, or Power icons are missing from the Taskbar Notification Area (Systray) in Windows Vista or Windows XP, try the following steps to try to bring them back.

1. Open Regedit by holding down the Windows Key and press the R key. Type regedit in the box and click OK.

2. Click My Computer on the top left side.

3. Click Edit > Find.

4. Type iconstreams and click Find.

5. If Regedit finds an entry named iconstreams, press the Delete button on your keyboard to delete it.

6. Press the F3 key on your keyboard to continue searching the registry. If Regedit finds any additional entries, delete those as well.

7. Repeat steps 2 through 6, only this time instead of searching for iconstreams, search for PastIconStreams instead, and delete any of those entries.

8. Close the registry editor and restart the computer. See if your System icons have reappeared in the Taskbar Notification Area (Systray).

See also: Systray icons missing

How to enable or disable the Network icon in the Notification Area or Systray in Windows Vista.

1. Right-click on a blank area of the Taskbar.

2. Click Properties.

3. Click the Notification Area tab.

4. Under System Icons, put a check in the box for Network to enable the network icon in the Systray or uncheck it to disable it.

5. Click OK.

If the Clock is missing from the Notification Area or Systray in Windows Vista, a registry entry may be the problem. First ensure that you have tried to, enable the clock. If that doesn’t work, try the following fix:

1. Hold down the Windows key and press R.

2. Type regedit and click OK.

3. Click the plus sign next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
then Software
then Microsoft
then Windows
then CurrentVersion
then Policies
then click Explorer

4. Look for an entry on the right side for HideClock. Right-click the entry and Delete it.

Read more… »

If the Power icon is missing from the Notification Area or Systray in Windows Vista, a registry change could fix the issue. First make sure you’ve tried to change the setting to enable or disable the Power Icon. If that doesn’t work, try the following fix:

1. Hold down the Windows key and press R.

2. Type regedit and click OK.

3. Click the plus sign next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
then Software
then Microsoft
then Windows
then CurrentVersion
then Policies
then click Explorer

4. Look for an entry on the right side for HideSCAPower. Right-click the entry and Delete it.

Read more… »

In Windows XP and Windows 2000, you may have a problem opening the Computer icon in Component Services (Dcomcnfg). When trying to open it, instead nothing happens and it automatically closes the entire window and disappears.

Try the following things to solve this issue.

1. Click Start > Run and type regsvr32 ole32.dll and click OK.

Try it now. If it doesn’t work, go to step 2.

2. Click Start > Run and type regedit and click OK.

3. Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\COM3

4. Delete the COM3 folder. Close the registry editor.

5. Open Start > Settings > Control Panel.

6. Open Add/Remove Programs.

7. Click Add/Remove Windows Components.

8. Click Next through the wizard. No need to check anything first. You may be prompted for a Windows Installation CD.

9. Restart the computer and try Component Services again.

If that doesn’t work, you may want to explore certain programs that may have corrupted this option. Some have reported that uninstalling McAfee or Nero products have fixed the issue.

See Also:

PRB: Cannot Expand “My Computer” in Component Services MMC Snap-In

McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i Update Problems

When installing a program, you may get the following error:

Error 2739. Could not access Javascript runtime action

This error is usually appears because the jscript.dll is not registered in Windows. To register it, perform the following steps:

1. Click Start > Run or hold down the Windows Key and press R.

2. Type regsvr32 jscript.dll.

3. Click OK when the message appears about the registration succeeding. If you receive an error instead, ensure you are logged into Windows as an Administrator.

I used the old registry tweaks for speeding up your Internet connection on my Windows 2000 and Windows 98 machines. By default, the registry wasn’t optimized for high speed Internet connections. These old tweaks worked very well in speeding up my connection back then. These days under Windows XP, I was getting decent speed with my cable modem, but nothing mind-blowing. I used to think that Windows XP didn’t need any tweaking at all and was already optimized for high speed connections. It turns out that I was wrong. I came across TCP Optimizer and thought I would give it a try. To my amazement, it tripled my Internet download speed.

Greedy for more speed, I began playing with the advanced settings in the program, trying to squeeze every last byte out of my connection. It eventually got to the point where my download speeds were 5 times faster, but my computer started losing connection randomly, forcing me to restart my computer often. Luckily there was an option in the software that backed up my previous settings, so I was able to revert back to them.

Give the software a try and see what it does for you. Click here for TCP Optimizer.
There is also a guide available on how to use it if you need help.

Here’s a workaround for a problem when you sync your iPod with a Windows XP computer and you get an error:

Disk cannot be read from or written to

1. Disconnect the iPod.

2. Right-click My Computer and select Properties.

3. Click the Hardware tab.

4. Click the Device Manager button.

5. Expand Universal Serial Bus Controllers.

6. Right-click Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller choose Disable.

Now try attaching your iPod again and syncing. Hopefully it will work. If it doesn’t check out the Apple article: “Disk cannot be read from or written to” when syncing iPod or “Firmware update failure” error when updating or restoring iPod

My boss tends to judge when employees have arrived at work by when they make it into GoogleTalk. Since I am late all the time, I’m going to setup GoogleTalk to start every weekday morning at 8:00am. Here’s how I did it.

1. Click Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks. This screen will appear. Click Next.

2. Select the program you want to schedule to be launched. Click Next.

Read more… »

When trying to run a Microsoft Windows Update, you get Error 8007000D and you cannot install updates.

Try importing the following file into your registry. wupdate.reg (You may need to right-click and select Save as…)

Running this file will make changes to your registry to restore the Microsoft Windows Update functionality. As a precaution, you may want to backup your registry before making this change.

Unfortunately, the iPhone doesn’t sync bookmarks directly from Firefox. There is a workaround though. To import Bookmarks from Firefox, you first will have to import them into Safari, then sync them into your iPhone.

Mac users can perform the following steps:

1. Open Safari and select File > Import Bookmarks…

2. Find your bookmark file under your Home folder, then Library > Application Support > Firefox > Profiles > user folder.

3. Double-click the file called bookmarks.html.

4. Connect your iPhone and select it on the left pane in iTunes.

5. Click on the Info button.

6. In the Web Browser section, turn on Sync Safari bookmarks and click Apply.

Windows users can perform these steps:

1. Open Firefox and select Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks.

2. Bookmarks Manager will open. Select File > Export…

3. Save the bookmarks.html file to your Desktop.

4. Open Safari and select File > Import Bookmarks…

5. Double-click the bookmarks.html file on your desktop.

6. Connect your iPhone and select it on the left pane in iTunes.

7. Click on the Info button.

8. In the Web Browser section change the option for Sync bookmarks from to Safari.

Today I had a problem going when I clicked on the System Restore tab under System Properties on my Windows XP system. When I would click it, System Properties would crash with a System Error. Here’s how I fixed this problem.

1. Open the Control Panel.

2. Open Administrative Tools.

3. Open on Services.

4. Open System Restore Service on the right side.

5. Click Stop.

6. Let the service stop, then click OK.

Now you should be able to access the System Restore tab. Uncheck the Turn off system restore on all drives if you would like to enable the System Restore feature again.

Are you having trouble finding the Data Sources (ODBC) option in your control panel? This is common in Windows XP. Here’s how you can enable it.

1. Hold down the Windows Key and press R.

2. Type regedit and click OK.

3. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\don’t load

4. Delete odbccp32.cpl on the right side.

5. Close the registry editor and now you should have the Data Sources (ODBC) option listed in the Control Panel.

I recently had a problem with Windows XP. I needed to create a simple text file in a directory. However, when I clicked on File > New, Text Document wasn’t showing in the menu. Neither was Wordpad Document, or Notepad document.

I tried the registry hack to add this at TweakXP, but that didn’t help me. Then I tried installing Tweak UI for Windows XP and played with the Templates option in there. I added Wordpad Document, but it still didn’t show up at all when I went to create a new text document.

Then it suddenly occurred to me that I had recently installed a third party notepad program recently. I didn’t like it, so I uninstalled it. Could that have jacked up my file associations? I opened My Computer > Tools > Folder Options > File Types. Sure enough, that was it. Windows XP had lost file associations for TXT files.

I highlighted TXT in the list and clicked Change. I then selected WordPad. I then had the option for WordPad Document listed when I clicked on File > New.

Windows Vista users are experiencing many problems with their printers. Some users are experiencing problems using the Add Printer Wizard to add their printer. It gives them an error:

Windows cannot connect to the printer. Access is denied

Thankfully there is a workaround to this issue.

1. Go to Control Panel and choose the Printers under Hardware and Sound.

2. Then choose Add Printer.

3. Choose Add a local printer. Click on Create a new port.

4. Select Local Port and click Next.

5. Type in the \\computer name\printer name for the Port name. Example: My computer’s name is oztech and the printer name is HPColorL so I typed in \\oztech\HPColorL

This workaround should work for most configurations.