Quite often, when working with Windows operating systems, regardless of what kind of modification is installed on a computer or laptop, users are in for a lot of minor troubles. For example, the volume icon on the "Taskbar" disappeared. What to do? Many users start to panic. However, there should be no reason for this. The situation, although not one of the most pleasant, is nevertheless not worth the upset.
Notebook owners are easier in this regard, since the volume control buttons are located directly on the keyboard and are mostly used in combination with the Fn key (and sometimes without it if they are placed on a separate panel). However, the solution to the question of how to restore the volume icon on the "Taskbar", as it turns out, lies on the surface. Consider a few basic options that can be applied to fix the problem for different versions of Windows.
Missing volume icon on Windows 7 Taskbar: restarting Explorer service
So, perhaps, the disappearance of the sound control icon was due solely to short-term malfunctions of the operating system itself. In this case, you just need to reboot.
If after restarting the OS the situation has not changed, you should pay attention to the Explorer system service. Do not confuse this process with Explorer, because this component, although it has a similar name, is responsible for the graphical interface of the system. To restart it, you must call the standard “Task Manager”, find in the process tree on the corresponding tab explorer.exe and select the end of the process through the PCM menu.
Now the problem of how to restore the volume icon on the "Taskbar" is solved by calling the "Run" console, in which the explorer.exe command is registered, after which the action is confirmed by clicking the "OK" button.
Zoom Setting
But suppose the sound icon on the "Taskbar" disappeared, and it was not possible to restore it by the methods described above. It is possible that the user changed the scale of the display of system elements, say, in order to reduce the font or size of the panels. In this case, it turns out that the icon with its size in the reduced panel simply does not fit.
There is nothing easier than invoking the screen settings and setting the original scale to 100% or bringing it, for example, to 125%.
How to restore the volume icon on the "Taskbar" in Windows 10 and below
Now a few words about the methods used in recent versions of Windows. Depending on the version of Windows 10 itself, the same solution can be implemented using different methods. For example, you can use the options menu with the transition to the system section, where the item of notifications and actions is selected, where you can configure the icons displayed in the panel.
In Windows 10 Pro, this option does not work. To configure, you need to use the “Taskbar” parameters, which are called up through the PCM menu in the free area of the panel below. On the right, you need to find the notification section similar to the above and use two lines: select the icons to display and enable or disable the icons. In each section, after entering for volume, you just need to set the slider to the on position.
Also, the question of how to restore the volume icon on the “Task Bar” in systems of a lower rank can be resolved through the “Control Panel”, where the section of sound and audio devices is selected. On the main tab at the bottom, check the box for displaying the icon.
Note: in some cases it will be necessary to use the line for hiding unused icons or to adjust this parameter so that the volume is set to Always display. In principle, if there are not so many icons displayed in the system tray, this option can be deactivated altogether.
System registry actions
Finally, the question of how to restore the volume icon on the “Taskbar” can be resolved through actions in the system registry, which can be called up with the regedit command. This method is universal and is suitable for absolutely all versions of Windows.
Here the HKCU branch is used, in which, through the software section of Software, moving through the directory tree, you need to find the TrayNotify directory. On the right there are two parameters: iconstreams and PastIconStream, which must be removed and then rebooted.
If such actions did not produce an effect, the problem of how to restore the volume icon on the "Taskbar" can be solved in another way. To do this, you need to find the Control Panel section through the HKLM branch, and the Desktop directory in it, then first create a string parameter named HungAppTimeout and set it to 20000 in the editing window. After that, the WaitToKillAppTimeout parameter is created in the same way, which is assigned the same value. Upon completion of these steps, a system reboot is mandatory.
A few words in the end
As additional measures, you should make sure that some specialized sound management applications are not installed or activated in the system, which at the time of using the audio driver are able to replace the standard mixer or system interface elements with your own components. It is possible that they have the option to hide the volume icon at the time of playback or inaction. In general, at least one of the proposed solutions should help in any case.
But if none of the proposed methodologies still gave a result, try updating, rolling back or reinstalling the sound device drivers. It is possible that such actions will give the long-awaited positive effect. Be sure to pay attention to some virtual devices and their drivers, as they can conflict with the main devices when using specialized audio processing software. If using two soundcards, try switching from one to the other, setting it as the device used by the system by default.