I've read all of the above posts and I have not seen any true solutions to this problem. 
I took it upon myself to do some thorough investigation into this matter with the 
missing system tray icons (I have this problem as well).

The problem began for me after the installation of Network Associates (McAfee) VirusScan 
Enterprise v7.1.0. After the installation of the software, my system tray icons would 
be missing after most boot-ups.

The problem is NOT related to Service Pack 2 for Windows XP, as I had this problem 
both prior AND after the upgrade to SP2.

I reformatted a second computer and did a new install of Windows XP Pro w/SP2. All 
system tray activity was normal. I then installed VirusScan Enterprise v7.1.0 and 
the problem with the icons began again.

I have scoured the McAfee knowledgebase in hopes of finding a solution, but there 
are none. I suggest that everybody who has this problem bring this to McAfee's attention 
in hopes that they provide an official patch or fix for this problem.

Once again, I am ABSOLUTELY SURE that the missing system tray icons are the fault 
of VirusScan v7.1.0. There MUST be something that this program triggers that causes 
the system tray icons to disappear.








On Wednesday, October 27, 2004 at 7:12 am, Peter Darton wrote:

>"Me too" - When I ran Windows Task Manager, I wasn't getting the little green square 

>that showed up CPU utilisation.

>I followed the instructions to kill off those two services (in my case, only SSDP 

>was running), and hey presto, Task Manager works again!

>

>> Maybe it is because of the security vulnerability in

>> those two programs, which didn't have any effect

>> until I turned on Norton Internet Security.

>

>I don't have NIS here, but I was missing the icon until I disabled SSDP.

>I do have Symantec antivirus, but all the firewalling here is done with hardware 

>firewalls - there's no firewalling done in software.

>I'm not in a position to comment on whether or not this screw-up was introduced 
in 

>SP2 or not as our IT chap installed SP2 before handing me the machine.

>

>

>I can, however, tell you that, on this PC at least (XP Pro, SP2 + a couple of hotfixes), 

>if I set the service "SSDP Discovery Service" to "Automatic" OR set it to "Manual" 

>and then start it manually, my "Windows Task Manager" icon fails to appear (unless 

>I'm very quick - it seems that it takes SSDP a few seconds to sabotage things)

>

>In other words, I believe it's all down to this SSDP service (at least it is here 

>- I've seen other things on the web suggesting that this is not the only cause of 

>missing icons - icon presence seems to be fairly flakey)

>

>

>> My wife's computer, which doesn't have NIS,

>> doesn't have the icon problem.

>

>But does it have SSDP disabled (or at least not started)?

>If there's nothing that'll make SSDP start up, it won't cause the icon problem.

>From the (very) brief description of the SSDP service, it looks aimed at networked 

>stuff, so if your wife's computer isn't networked, SSDP may not start up (and if 

>it is networked, you'd want firewall & anti-virus stuff on it...)

>

>

>> Do all the people having this problem have NIS, or

>> at least a modern firewall program?

>

>We've got Symantec anti-virus here, doing file-scan stuff mainly - nothing in the 

>way of inbound or outbound network traffic on the desktop PCs.

>Our firewall is a (seperate) PC running smoothwall.