bfotk

Here's my systray:

Note the icon between the Quiicktime and AVG icons. (Sixth in from the left.)

As you see, it's grayed out with a red "no way" symbol over it. I don't know what it is. I'd like to get rid of it.

Here's what I see when I hover the mouse pointer over it:


Disconnected? Disconnected from what? What's disconnected?

Here's the result of a right click on it:


Okay, I can Exit, but it's back on the next boot. A left click does nothing.

I don't see that it's doing me any great harm. It just bugs me and I'd like it to be gone. I see nothing in the Startup Manager that I cannot account for. Also, Startup Manager shows associated icons (when available) and nothing resembles this blob.

Suggestions?

rodent32

try looking in tools add-on's it may be there if not try emptying prefetch folder in windows, if that don't sort it', only other thing i can think of is looking in add remove programs and see if its there, if it is uninstall it ..

good luck. :-D

blah789

That's a lot of icons! It's pretty hard to guess what that program might be. If it starts up at every boot, I'd look in the start menu under startup and see if anything looks remotely like it (perhaps close it, then open the items in startup in turn and see if the icon returns). Also run the registry editor (start, run, regedit), and check these two keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
for startup programs. If you see anything amiss, copy the name of the program into the run box (copy the value of the string* into start, run) to see if it loads the icon again. If you've found it, and it looks like something you don't need or suspicious, just zap that string.

BTW, you can remove the quicktime tray icon if you don't like it. Open QuickTime, go to edit preferences, quicktime preferences. Go to the advanced tab, and uncheck the box about the system tray icon.


* an example so it's clearer:
key name is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
the string name is
QuickTime Task
and value of that string is
"C:\Program Files\QuickTime\qttask.exe" -atboottime

bfotk

Thanks for the suggestions. So far, nothing has changed, although I did tell Quicktime that I didn't need to see it in the systray area.

Prefetch seems to be an XP thing. I don't see any references to that and W2K.

I didn't find anything in the registry keys that seemed odd.

I tried logging in as a different user to see if the issue was with my login alone. It's not. The icon showed up.

So here's what I just did. I brought up the Processes list in Task Manager. I counted the number of entries...48. Then I closed it and did a right click on the offending icon and clicked Exit. The icon went away as expected. I reopened the Task Manager Processes list and counted down...47!

So unless something else just decided to quit, I can make a list of the Processes (by hand unless someone can tell me how to get all of them showing at once or how to print the list) with the icon there and then another list (ditto above) and compare the two.

Obviously I'll sort the lists by process name in each case.

I'll let you know if it works.

bfotk

I got it. It's tsnpstd3.exe. Probably not a problem, but I've set it not to load on startup.

blah789

A google search suggests it may be related to webcams
http://www.file.net/process/tsnpstd3.exe.html
Plug in your webcam and see if it stops saying "disconnected" with the X on top of it.