Perhaps we are confusing two different things here. The taskbar can be set to show
or hide inactive icons in the system tray and that particular behaviour can be locked
as I described. That behaviour will not change by itself because Windows simply does
not do that (and we can't blame it for anything). Now each application icon may or
may not have it's own option for being displayed when it is active/inactive and maybe
that is the part of it that appears to be inconsistent. Those options may not survive
a reboot for example and it is up to the application to retain or discard such settings.
The matter can be further complicated by the fact that the order in which the system
tray icons appear at boot time may be different from one boot to another due to the
asynchronous manner in which boot/login startup options are launched. Personally,
I take control of my startup sequence of events using a program called Startup Delayer
from R2 Studios, so my system tray icons always appear in the same order. Hope this
helps. Cheers. Spexx.
