System Icons Greyed Out in Windows 7?
Are your system icons greyed out in Windows 7? If your system icons are greyed out and you need them badly, then you should read this tutorial to find out how to enable the system icons again!
First Steps! Prerequisites
Before your follow this tutorial:
1. Restart. Sometimes a restart will solve this problem.
2. Open an elevated command prompt. Enter “sfc.exe /scannow” (without quotes) and hit enter.
3. Wait until the scan has finished, then reboot.
We are doing this system scan because sometimes, viruses can change your explorer.exe and then you will lose your system icons in Windows 7. Also, if you followed our tutorial and replaced the explorer.exe, you might accidentally disable all system icons.
Enable System Icons via Local Group Policy Editor
Important: If you are Windows 7 Home or Windows 7 Home Basic, click here now.
Ok, so all of the system icons are greyed out, what can we do about it? We can edit the local group policies to enable the system icons again, so that they will all appear in your system tray again.
1. Click on “Start”
2. Enter “gpedit.msc” into the search field and click on “gpedit.msc” at the bottom when it appears.
3. In the left pane, uncollapse the folders “Administrative Templates” and then “Start Menu and Taskbar”:
4. Scroll down in the right pane until you find the entries:
- Remove the Action Center icon
- Remove the networking icon
- Remove the battery meter
- Remove the volume control icon
5. Double-click on “Remove the Action Center icon”
6. On the following window, check the option “Disabled”:
7. Click on Apply and then on “OK”.
8. Repeat the same for the other entries “Remove the networking icon”, “Remove the battery meter”, “Remove the volume control icon”.
9. Reboot.
When you log in all the system icons should appear in your system tray and they will no longer be greyed out.
Remember this will only work on Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. The Local Group Policy Editor isn’t available on Windows 7 Home nor Windows 7 Home Premium. That’s why you will need some registry keys.
Enable System Icons via Registry
Copy the following text into a notepad:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
“HideSCAVolume”=dword:00000000
“HideSCAPower”=dword:00000000
“HideSCANetwork”=dword:00000000
“HideSCAHealth”=dword:00000000
Save it with the extension .reg (simply enter “enablesystemicons.reg” as your filename).
Double-click on it and confirm the UAC prompt.
Instead you can also download the registry keys, double-click on the file and you are done:
Download Registry Hack: Enable System Icons
Or you might like these sexy wallpaper, tweaks and themes:
Tags: greyed out, system icons Written by oliversk Thursday, March 18th, 2010
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Hi, thanks for allowing me to try this, but unfortunately it did not work for me. I followed each step to the letter, I went back to group policy editor to see if the changes I made were still there and they are, they still say disabled on all 4 items but in the notifications area the power icon and the action center icon are still greyed out.
I even used the Enable System Icons via Registry, then rebooted and still they are greyed out.
Any ideas, thank in advance.
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1, 32bit system, intel P4 3.20Ghz 2 logical threads, 2.00 GB memory, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600
In My Registry
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
HideSCAHealth REG_DWORD 0×00000000 (0)
HideSCANetwork REG_DWORD 0×00000000 (0)
HideSCAPower REG_DWORD 0×00000000 (0)
HideSCAVolume REG_DWORD 0×00000000 (0)
NoDriveTypeAutoRun REG_DWORD 0×00000091 (145)
NoRealMode REG_DWORD 0×00000000 (0)
I am in the same boat as jim moore.
Action Center and Battery are greyed out, and going through the fixes here did not bring them back.
If anyone else has had this problem and knows of some alternate fixes, that would be great.
For me I had to delete the HideSCA*** entries, run gpupdate /force, and restart. <-Yes, even running Windows 7 Home Premium had to do the gpupdate /force. Hope it helps!
Mike
After all above steps are taken I have found that you cannot run APC software with their UPS batteries. If you want the Power/battery system icon to appear uninstall Powerchute and remove the APC driver in . You should uninstall the APC software and then remove the APC driver from your OS in Device Manager. Also remove APC from HID devices in Device Manager. Unplug your battery from the computer and plug it back in. If APC Battery comes up you have to uninstall the driver from your computer. Then after that the Microsoft HID battery will take over and run natively. Reboot and your Battery Icon will appear with the others.
Note: This only applies to the Battery Icon which gets greyed out in settings if APC software is installed. Hope this helps some.