When Windows Explorer (Explorer.exe) crashes or restarted, is there a script to restore the missing system tray icons?

I had been meaning to ask but whenever Windows Explorer (Explorer.exe) crashes or restarted, many of the system tray icons will be missing. What I usually do is go through System Informer (formerly Process Hacker) with all the processes in alphabetical order and then compare the process names to see if the corresponding system tray icon is there or not. If not, then I restart the process which kills and starts the same process again and the system icon for that process will be restored. Is there a script or something that can restore only the missing system tray icons after the Windows Explorer crashes or restarted? Restarting Windows obviously will load all the system icons. Does @Brink have a tutorial or script for this? Thanks!

Hello Vincent,

Normally, the system icons should automatically reload when the explorer process restarts if they run at startup or currently open.

Does manually restarting the explorer process when this happens restore them?


If not, then you could test resetting the notification icons below to see if that may allow to reload afterwards.

Brink said:

Hello Vincent,

Normally, the system icons should automatically reload when the explorer process restarts if they run at startup or currently open.

Does manually restarting the explorer process when this happens restore them?

Restart Windows Explorer.exe Process in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to restart the explorer.exe process as needed in Windows 11. The explorer.exe process is the user shell for Windows, and is used by such items as the desktop, File Explorer, Start menu, notification area, and taskbar. Restarting the explorer.exe process is to...

www.elevenforum.com

If not, then you could test resetting the notification icons below to see if that may allow to reload afterwards.

Reset Notification Icons on Taskbar System Tray in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to reset the notification icons cache to fix any corrupted icons and remove any old icons from the taskbar system tray for your account in Windows 11. The system tray on the taskbar corner and taskbar corner overflow menu in Windows 11 shows the notification...

www.elevenforum.com

Click to expand...

Hello Shawn:

The answer to the first is no as there are a few that I always need to kill and restart the following processes since they are missing and that's restarting the explorer process using your script that adds the restart entries to the right click on Desktop Restart Explorer options:


1. CCleaner64.exe which is CCleaner
2. D4.exe which is Dimension 4 - it's to sync the time
3. FxSound.exe
4. memreduct.exe
5. nearby_share.exe which is Google Quick Share
6. nVidia Notification Tray icon and GPU Activity Icon which is fixed with right click Desktop then NVIDIA Control Panel and in NVIDIA Control Panel, basically goto the Desktop menu and uncheck and then check Show Notification Tray Icon and Display GPU Activity Icon in Notification area
7. pdf24.exe which is PDF24 Creator
8. PremierColor.exe which is Dell PremierColor
9. SnagitCapture.exe which is Techsmith Snagit

Windows Explorer crashing on it's own unless severe atleast in 11 will actually show all the system tray icons. In 10, it would have required restarting all the processes similar to manually killing and restarting the explorer.exe process.

I already tried resetting the notification icons using the method you mentioned since that is more for corrupted icon caches and the icons would be missing when logging into Windows which is what that fixes as this problem is nothing new, had seen it with Win 95, 98, 2000, XP, 7, 10 and 11. Whenever the Explorer.exe process is killed and restarted or Explorer crashes, there will always be a few missing system tray icons that only will show when the processes for those are manually killed and restarted. Windows when logging in will always show all the icons, it's only when explorer crashes on it's own or when the explorer.exe process is killed and started again that will cause the problem.