Question Taskbar icons in notification area vanished

[lenjack]

New W10 build, all updates. Suddenly noticed taskbar icons in notification area are gone. I know how to selectively place them, so I went into settings to see what happened. I went to "Select which icons appear on taskbar", and the page was completely blank. There was nothing for me to select. I ran system file checker, checkdisk, and the DISM,Restorehealth command, with no change. I've searched Google for this as well. Any ideas?

Running programs, do appear on taskbar, as they should, as do date and time.

 

[lenjack]

UPDATE...Problem fixed itself spontaneously. Noted on today's startup. No clue why. No overnight update to account for it. I'd be interested in any ideas why the problem arose, and why it resolved.

 

[Steltek]

It was probably an issue with the icon cache. I wouldn't worry about it unless it happens again or unless you start seeing other issues.

If you want to be proactive about it, run all the usual checks (CHKDSK, SFC, and DISM check health) to check for file system corruption, system file integrity, and component store corruption.

Also, if you have an AMD system, you might take a look under Device Manager with the Show Hidden Devices option checked. I've seen a couple of AMD systems in the last few days that had a bunch of unnecessary devices installed with 20H2 (I'm talking weird stuff, like Intel processors, etc). Obviously, someone at Microsoft messed up in generating the install image by not removing unnecessary hardware drivers.

 

[lenjack]

Thanks. It's an Intel system, and it is 20H2. I did run all those checks you mention, with no joy. This issue persisted for almost a week, over about 30 startups. No clue why it spontaneously resolved.

 

[Steltek]

I vaguely require a bug a couple of years ago that did the same thing. I don't recall there being a solution for it, though.

Worst comes to worse, if it keeps happening run a repair install to see if that will fix it.