Missing battery meter

[Builder]

I recently acquired a Dell laptop with Windows XP Home. In the last day or so (I didn't notice until just an hour or so ago), the battery meter / charging indicator icon in the tray disappeared and I can't seem to get it back. I went into the power options in Control Panel and all the settings, including the one labelled "Always show icon on taskbar" are set correctly. I even cycled between On and Off for the above-mentioned setting to try to "kick-start" it. Nothing worked. This is the first computer I have used with XP, and I don't know my way around the OS real well yet so I may be missing some other setting somewhere.

Anyone have any ideas about how to get this back??

Thanks,
Kevin

[(jj)]

There should be a symbol at your sys tray that looks like a chevron ^ that should "open" up your sys tray to show all of the running apps.

If that chevron isn't there, then there are some work arounds to "fix" the problem, you can find some at Kellys Korner (http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/top10faqs.htm) they are listed in the "Why don't my Notification Area icons show or why do they disappear?" section.

Maybe Satis will stop by and have a better/faster solution, I'm not much of an XP geek.

[Builder]

Clicked that "show/hide" button many times looking for that little icon. Even thought about seeing if I could peel back the task bar in case it was being shy. :p

Thanks jj,
Kevin

[satis]

welp, I didn't know anything off the top of my head, but I did find this thread talking about the problem. Looks like you're not the only one.

http://www.leog.net/fujp_forum/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=1575

the fix seems to revolve around turning off 'network services' in the windows components portion of add/remove programs.

I couldn't find anything on Microsoft's websites regarding this.

[Builder]

Cool...

Thanks, Satis. I'm off to try some of the suggestions on that page. Will let you know what worked.

Thanks again,
Kevin

[Builder]

The suggestion that worked was to turn off Networking Services in the Windows component section of Add/Remove programs. Yeah, I know that networking shouldn't have anything to do with the power/battery meter, but it does.

The only question I have is that it turns off things like Universal Plug and Play and Simple TCP/IP Services. Is that only for networking, or does that affect dial-up connections and hardware detection?

Thanks for the link Satis!

Kevin

[satis]

no problem. And to answer your question:

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is to allow plug and play functionality for network equipment. Basically, it'll let you plug in UPnP enabled routers and let your computer automatically configure them. That goes for any networking equipment.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;323713
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/evaluate/upnpxp.asp

there aren't many UPnP enabled devices out there, and they can all still be set up manually, so no loss there.

Simple TCP/IP services is used to enable basic TCP/IP services like chargen and echo and stuff. Useless to most of us. In fact, useless to basically everyone.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/proddocs/standard/sag_TCPIP_pro_SimpTcpInstall.asp

So, in short, no, you're not missing out on anything.

[Builder]

Thanks again, Satis. Both you guys, Satis and Jack, have proved again why this forum is such a great resource.

Kevin

[dxh]

It's been a while since this has been attended but I just want to help someone else with the same problem and that I have had for a half a day till I discovered the other solution. In my case The Networking Services were already off so the above solution has not worked for me.
I have eventually found that all it was needed is to start SysTray.exe. Permanently it can be set up to start automatically through either Programs/Startup or via registry key at [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run] .
Cheers