So this is a new oddity over the last week or so.

As the title says, a couple of the "running" icons in the task bar by the clock have been randomly disappearing. I occasionally notice a brief flicker on one of my monitors but I don't always see it. I will just happen to mouse over the time/date and notice the icons are gone.

As far as I can tell, it seems to be the same ones every time, the firewall icon, Nvidia, and Asus GPU tweak, and sometimes it will happen a couple time a day. After a reboot they all come back, sometimes they stay for the rest of the day/night, but sometimes they will disappear again at some point.

I have updated nvidia drivers and chipset drivers. I have not tried updating anything "windows" related yet. I have also ran my antivirus and found nothing. I still want to run malwarebytes but I haven't had the chance yet.

Googling things, all I can find is stuff from several years ago and none of them seem to be relevant. Mostly just showing how to change settings to show or hide them.

I'm kinda feeling like maybe it's a windows explorer crashing thing, but I can't find anything anywhere to verify that.

Anything else I could check? I have actually also been having a issue with one of my monitors randomly cutting out, but I was thinking that it was just the monitor itself starting to go, but now I'm not too sure about that eather after adding the icon issue.

I get those too especially in the start menu. If you open up task manager, I bet you'll see your CPU load getting maxed out to 100% during those times. Mine does it at the start.

There's some strange stuff going on in Win10, I haven't see those icons disappear, however whenever Win10 gets tired of Acrobat Reader being the preferred program associated with PDF files, it will change it to MSFT Edge.

Never changes it to anything else, just Edge, and for no particular reason, I can be opening files, boom, changes, looking at the screen, boom changes it, saving a pdf, boom change.

Both Adobe and MSFT deny it happens, but google it and you get eleventy billion complaints..

I did have the associated program thing once but that was quite a while ago. I actually can't remember how long ago it was but it was after a windows update.

I will keep a eye on CPU usage next time it happens.
Oddly enough, I have actually been using Acrobat a bunch over the last week or two and I have run into issues with it giving me "out of memory" errors more than once. Hmmmm???

The monitor randomly cutting out has been a thing for a bit longer tho. And that doesn't really happen all that often.

I've been using Win10 for a long time and haven't had any problems with it.

Been lucky I guess.

Let me get old school on this one:

"It's not a bug, it's a feature."

One of the reasons why i quit my job after 30 years of fixing PCs is W10.

0-0

LOL I found one of those "fun features" a few years ago. I would notice my recycle bin was "full" on occasions. Without really thinking, I would just right click and empty it.

It wasn't until a couple weeks went by when it was happening every couple days that I finalyl thought to look before hitting the empty button. Turns out everything in it was stuff that I did NOT delete. Pics, docs,Icons, ect.

It was probably another week or two of it happening before I finally spent a couple hours googling and figured out wtf and got that feature disabled. I have no clue what or how much actually got deleted before I finally figured it out.

Years ago, when personal computers started appearing in peoples homes I used to fix them for the owners.

It didn't take long to figure out that people were causing most of the problems with their computers and were heavily into denial about their being part of the problem.

I ultimately backed off from it except for very good friends.

quote:

Originally posted by 0-0:
Let me get old school on this one:

"It's not a bug, it's a feature."

One of the reasons why i quit my job after 30 years of fixing PCs is W10.

0-0

that doesn't make a lot of sense as it's the best operating system they've ever had, hands down without a doubt.

quote:

Originally posted by DonDraper:

quote:

Originally posted by 0-0:
Let me get old school on this one:

"It's not a bug, it's a feature."

One of the reasons why i quit my job after 30 years of fixing PCs is W10.

0-0

that doesn't make a lot of sense as it's the best operating system they've ever had, hands down without a doubt.

ROTFLMAO....

So they say.

I prefer NT4, XP or W7. Take NT (not easy children, any of them) over W10 any day of the week.

Just my 30 years of experience as adv. user and fixer talking. No doubts either.
But to each...

0-0

What version of Windows 10 are you on? 20H2 is latest point release.

I admin over 50 public use computers at my job at the WV State Museum, mostly laptops, and several large format touch screens. I find that if some are left not updated, after 3 months or so the task bar icons on the right disappear. This doesn't get straightened out until I update Windows. All run Win10, most now have the 20H2 version.

quote:

Originally posted by 0-0:

quote:

Originally posted by DonDraper:

quote:

Originally posted by 0-0:
Let me get old school on this one:

"It's not a bug, it's a feature."

One of the reasons why i quit my job after 30 years of fixing PCs is W10.

0-0

that doesn't make a lot of sense as it's the best operating system they've ever had, hands down without a doubt.

ROTFLMAO....

So they say.

I prefer NT4, XP or W7. Take NT (not easy children, any of them) over W10 any day of the week.

Just my 30 years of experience as adv. user and fixer talking. No doubts either.
But to each...

0-0

So what OS do you run at home?
Yes I had my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer cert in NT 4.0. I've supported them all, Desktop and Server side. This is in a large environment, 30K client machines. No way in hell would I go backwards to any of those OS's. Unless you don't care about security or have no access to modern hardware - completely unrealistic to still be supporting those. As a home desktop - Windows 10 has been more or less trouble free, especially compared to past versions. Don't even have to install a 3rd party AV.

OP - how much ram is in your system? What is your CPU/motherboard? Did you upgrade to Windows 10 from a previous OS, or was it a fresh install?

xantom it's win10 Pro 1909, build 18363.959

It has been a while since I did any windows updates. I generally try to avoid updating windows unless their is some major issues with something. Every time I have done updates it seems like something else always gets more annoying lol.

As far as 10 being the "best" they ever had, I would also have to disagree. I have been building and fixing things since win95 and if it wasn't for the fact that I was basically forced into 10, I would not be using it. I had zero issues with my win8.1 and still prefer to be using that over 10.

You should be running windows update every month.

What CPU, motherboard, ram do you have? Did you upgrade to Windows 10 or install it from scratch?

AMD 3900X overclocked
Crosshair 8 Hero
32GB Trident Z Neo
2 MSI 2080TI SLI overclocked
500GB 970 EVO NVME boot drive
6TB WD Black HD for storage
EK Water loop

It was a clean install back in April last year when I built it, and for the most part has been ok. The only other annoying "feature" I have run into somewhat recently is the "ding" that should happen when you plug in or remove something like a USB thumb drive. It stopped dinging at one point but wold come back after a reboot....until one day it just stopped dinging and has never worked since. That was several months ago...I think I may have done a windows update somewhere around that time as well lol

I have been watching the icons since the first post, and surprisingly they have not disappeared since I posted about it. I am starting to wonder if it had something to do with adobe. But the screen cutting out I'm thinking is probably something different, altho that hasen't happened recently eather.

IMO you should run the latest version of win 10. You are several releases out of date. This Microsoft tool will get you squared away quickly.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...e-download/windows10

Click update now, open the exe and the update assistant will get you to the latest version of 10. Once you are at 20H2 search for updates, install updates, restart, rinse repeat until you can't find more updates.

If you are worried about updating, make a quick image of your drive before running the update assistant.

I like Macrium Reflect Free

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

Thanks, I am looking over the 20H update right now. I don't see anything that "good" about it really. I don't mind the security updates but every time they do a "feature" update, for me anyway, the bulk of those features end up being more of a annoyance than good.

I am actually digging around looking on how to update everything else without the 20H part.