Why is my Action Center tray icon missing?

As I said earlier.

Select Start, Run, type regedit in the box and press the ENTER key. In regedit, navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID and continue to the location of the Control Panel icon in the table below and check whether you have this entry.

Control Panel Icon Registry CLSID Location

Action Center {BB64F8A7-BEE7-4E1A-AB8D-7D8273F7FDB6}\DefaultIcon

Check whether you have identical information:

Default REG_SZ Action Center CPL

InfoTip REG_EXPAND_SZ @%SystemRoot%\System32 \ActionCnterCPL.dll,-2

Localised String REG_EXPAND_SZ @%SystemRoot%\System32 \ActionCnterCPL.dll,-1

System.ApplicationName REG_SZ Microsoft.ActionCenter

System.ControlPanel.Category REG_DWORD 0x00000005 (5)

SystemControlPanel.EnableInSafeMode REG_DWORD 0x00000003 (3)

System.Software.TasksFileUrl REG_SZ Internal

Yes already tried everything mentioned here in this topic...

Still greyed out!

Okey that's too bad.

I had just the exact same issue with the greyed out ActionCenter on/off toggle button in the system icons configuration panel.

This was due to a virus that turned off the security center service and messed with the registry.

I also tried everything i came over from different forums so maybe it was a combination that finally fixed my problem.

Anyway it was from this site i found the IconStreams fix which finally worked for me, perhaps there's something else here that can help you.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/fix-network-clock-volume-and-power-battery-system-icons-missing-with-disabled-or-grayed-out-check-box-options/.

I first deleted the value, then killed all explorer.exe processes in task manager and then manually started explorer.exe from file>new task. And then i restarted the computer. After a while the icon came back and the option to turn it on/off is no longer greyed out.

I used this guide to remove the virus that infected my computer: http://malwaretips.com/blogs/live-security-platinum-virus/

At step 3 there was a registry fix file which i ran, don't know if you had the same virus or if this file has anything to do with the ActionCenter icon but I thought I'll tell you anyway.

Hello,

Already went through the digitallige web page, still greyed out.

The virus is no longer on my computer...   It just did so much damage!  I was able to recover all registry entries that was deleted, but cannot find what's missing for the ActionCenter icon.  I tried running ProcessMonitor on a good computer to try to compare, but I did not learn much by doing this...  Maybe I'm just not experienced enough with ProcessMonitor...

On a clean computer, within the following...

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Notification Area Icons\System Icons

...I've been observing the Action Center Behaviors column, while adjusting the expected registry key:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]

"HideSCAHealth"=dword:00000001

After setting the above registry value and restarting Explorer.exe (or logging off then on), the Action Center Behaviors column becomes off and greyed out, as expected.

Once in this state, removing the registry key value, or setting it to zero, and restarting Explorer.exe does NOT return the Action Center Behavior column back the the expected state (On and not greyed out).

If I use gpedit.msc (this is on Windows 7 Enterprise) and adjust the following item...

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar > Remove the Action Center icon

...to disabled, leave the system icons page and go back to it (note no need to restart Explorer.exe), the Action Center Behavior column is now On and not grayed out.

The question is, what is gpedit.msc doing, in addition to changing the registry key, so that we can apply this to a Windows 7 Home Premium edition machine, which doesn't have gpedit.msc?