volume icon in taskbar is missing (windows xp professional)

I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM, THE VOLUME ICON WITH THE SLIDE BUTTOM, DISSAPEARED FROM MY TASK BAR AND COULD NOT FIND HOW TO PUT IT BACK. FINALLY AFTER HITTING THE PROBLEM INTO MY BRAIN FOUND THE SOLUTION AND THE SOLUTION IS THIS:

SOLUTION:

GET THE OS WINDOWS CD THAT HAS THE INSTALLATION AND SO ON, HAVE IT READY. DO NOT PUT IT INTO THE DRIVE, JUST WAIT.

THEN CLICK THE "START" BUTTOM  LOCATED DOWN AT THE LEFT CORNER OF THE TASK BAR

THEN CLICK THE "CONTROL PANEL"

THEN CLICK THE "ADD/REMOVE PROG..."

WAIT UNTIL IT HAS STOPPED LOOKING FOR ALL THE PROGRAMS AND

THEN CLICK ON THE  LEFT SIDE ON THE VERTICAL COLUMN THE "ADD/REMOVE WINDOWS COMPONENTS"

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, YOU WILL SEE A LIST OF THE WINDOWS COMPONENTS ON WHICH YOU ARE GOING TO ACT UPON.  MOST OF THE TIMES, I CAN SAY, ALWAYS, ALL OF THE LITTLE BOXES WILL HAVE A CHECK MARK

ON THE LITTLE SQUARES IF THIS IS THE CASE, REMOVE THE CHECK MARKS CLICKING BACK ON THEM SO THAT ALL THE SQUARES ARE CLEAN, WITH NO CHECK MARKS,

THEN AT THE TOP YOU WILL FIND "ACCESORIES AND UTILITIES", THE  LITTLE SQUARE HAS NO CHECK MARKS

SEE THAT NO OTHER SQUARES HAVE THE CHECK MARK, ONLY THE "ACCESORIES AND UTILITIES"

THEN CLICK AT THIS LITTLE SQUARE AND HIT "ENTER"

IT WILL APPEAR A WINDOWS THAT TELLS YOU TO INSERT THE WINDOWS OS CD IN THE "D" DRIVE

INSERT THE WINDOWS OS CD  AND LET IT WORK BY ITSELF DO NOTHING, JUST WAIT, THEN A BLUE

WINDOW APPEARS AND ASK YOU WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO, LIKE INSTALL WINDOWS AGAIN OR

ACCESS AND INSTALL UTILITIES AND/OR SPECIAL ACCESSORIES CHOOSE THIS AND HIT IT

IT WILL SHOW WHICH SPECIA UTILITIES AND/OR ACCESORIES DO YOU WANT THEN CHOOSE THE SOUND

SECCION, SEE THAT YOU ONLY CHOOSE THIS SECTION AND NO OTHER OR OTHERS "CLICK" OR "ENTER" IT

THEN IT WILL APPEAR THE UTILITIES RELATED TO SOUND AND VOLUME AND MEDIA APPLICATIONS OR

PROGRAMS ALL WITH THE LITTLE SQUARES WITH A CHECK ON THEM, JUST HIT "ENTER" AND THEN IT WILL

START DOWNLOADING ALL THOSE UTILITIES,  A SMALL WINDOW WILL APPEAR TELLING YOU THAT THERE IS A

BETTER OR MORE ADVANCED UTILITY IN THE PC AND WILL ASK IF YOU WANT IT TO OVERRIDE IT, CHEK YES OR OK AND SO ON ALWAYS CLICK TO OVERRIDE OR CONTINUE INSTALLING THEM  UNTIL IT FINISHED WHEN IT HAS FINISHED IT WILL SHOW  A WINDOW FROM WINDOWS INSTALLER TELLING YOU THAT IT IS FINISHED AND THEN CLOSE ALL THE WINDOWS USED IN THE PROCESS.

CHECK THE TASK BAR LOOKING FOR THE VOLUME CONTROL AND STILL IT IS NOT THERE, BUT THEN, PAY ATTENTION, GO TO THE "START" ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE TASK BAR AND CLICK IT, THEN CLICK THE CONTROPANEL, THEN CLICK THE "SOUND" ICON ON THE PANEL CONTROL AND ON THE WINDOW THAT APPEAR THERE IS SMALL SQUARE THAT SAYS IF YOU WANT THE VOLUME ICON TO BE PLACED ON THE TASK BAR

CLICK IT AND ENTER AND THEN YOU WILL FIND THE ICON ON THE RIGHT CORNER OF THE TASK BAR NEAR WHERE THE TIME AND DATE IS AND THIS IS ALL YOU ARE DONE WITH IT.

I HOPE THIS WILL BE THE RIGHT SOLUTION, REMEMBER TO FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS AS THEY HAVE BEEN WRITTEN HERE  AND MAYBE, I HOPE, YOUR PROBLEM HAS BEEN SOLVED.  IT IS KIND OF ANNOYING BUT IT IS GOOD. SINCERELY,

ANDAAAGAAALAAAGAAA    YES, THIS IS MY NAME HERE AT WINDOWS LIVE. 

 

see: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_v.htm#volume

 +

Restore Volume and Net Icon to Notification Area (Line 320)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

---

Kaylene Horne / TaurArian [MVP] 2005-2011. The information has been provided *as is* with no warranties or guarantees.

I have battled this problem for a couple days, and with Andaaagaaalaaagaaa's process, I now have the speaker on my user's computer.  I had tried many others, to no avail, but once I did his, then went into the sounds and devices, it let me put a check to place volume icon on the taskbar.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Cindi

yes, thank you. my friend lost his icon but without a windows CD we could not fix him remotely through team viewer. so, i made a win xp iso dropped it on his desktop took the I386 file out and put it on a small  flash drive and directed to it, same principal. Again, thank you for your knowledge. it's still helping in Dec of 2012.

Thanks...worked

AVAST users may wish to tick an option in antivurus program settings for it to delay the loading of avast services for after other system services. After an entire week of tweaking and struggling around windows registry that was the simple solution. 

AVAST users may wish to tick an option in antivurus program settings for it to delay the loading of avast services for after other system services. After an entire week of tweaking and struggling around windows registry that was the simple solution. 

Thank you, this advice saved me hours of time, I have already spent days trying to figure this out!  Thank you for posting your solution to help others.

Here is where you can find the Delay Loading in AVAST:

Run AVAST, Settings, Troubleshooting, check the box to Delay the Loading of Avast Services

This will add a warning in red letters, but I am willing to risk it to have my sounds working correctly again.  This solves the lost volume control icon and fixed my main issue of I lost my default beep, it was replaced with the system beep.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I updated my AVAST, and my volume icon disappeared from the tray. 

Thanks to Google and you, it is now back with very little time wasted.

Hi Everyone,

First of all whoever could fix this problem, I will be very thankful as I have done everything to fix the problem, but yet no success! This has been going on for 3 days and I googled every possible answer that was written.

Everything was working fine until 3 days ago! I have not removed/deleted any kind of program or software. All of a sudden I was unable to listen or hear any videos/music on youtube or facebook. I was unable to listen to a radio online. But meantime I was able to listen to my cd’s or mp3 songs on my hardrive. (so, internet based music was not coming thru)

So, what did I do so far?

1)    I went to “start menu, control panel, sound and audio devices” and saw that the option "place volume icon in the taskbar" was grayed out!

2)    Then I copied the “sndvol32.exe”  into my computer (first I used my old computer, and since that did not work, I used the windows xp cd that came with the computer, I copied the sndvol32.exe once again to my pc, still it was useless)

3)    Since nothing was, this time I went to start, run, entered “regedit” , clicked ok, found drivers32 registry folder, clicked on permission, removed all the permissions for driver32…and it was useless

4)    So I went to “Control Panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager, “Sound  video and game controllers” and clicked on the “+” sign to see all subtitles. There was no question marks or error sign next to them…

5)    As I lost my hope I turned off my pc and went to sleep, but the following day (yesterday) I turned the pc on, and I saw that I was ABLE to check the box in saying "place volume icon in the taskbar" because it was not grayed out anymore! ( I also noticed that “sounds and audio devices properties was named as “realtek HD Audio Manager” which came with the computer when I first bought it from DELL)

As I still could not see the volume icon (even though the box was checked in) I finally decided to “restore system” and went to the date  4 days ago.

System restored all the old setting, restarted itself, but the volume icon was still not there in the taskbar, but this time under the “sound and audio devices properties” the “place volume icon in the task bar” was grayed out again.

Currently –while I am writing this lines- I can still listen to my music which is in my hardrive, I can play cd’s , but I can’t hear anything on any radio station, can’t hear a video on youtube etc. Under the “sounds and audio deviced propterties” the place volume icon in the taskbar is still grayed out and no volume icon. I do can see the other icon which says realtek hd audio manager is hangining in there and it has never disappeared

If you could ever help me a little bit , or give any kind of advise, I will be thankful

Have a nice Day

Baris

So, with windows 10 I followed with minor changes:

go into:  Task manager

go to:  Details tab

highlight:  Explorer.exe

click: End task

to to:  Users

highlight:  (yourself)

click:  Disconnect user

do a restart (you may have to hold down power button to shut off)

volume icon back in my task bar....YEAH!

Thank you!!!!

Site/method below worked for me, after a lot of time wasted w other methods that did not work.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/319095/volume-icon-is-not-displayed-in-the-notification-area,-and-you-may-receive-an-error-message-when-you-try-to-add-it

This worked when many other on-line suggestions did not, I had to get a new copy of the Sndvol32.exe file from my XP installation disk and the article above told how to do it.

I had found that on my computer, sndvol32.exe was actually present in C\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache folder. But there was no volume icon and I could not add it, and so the existing sndvol32.exe file must have been corrupted. Getting a new and good copy of the file sndvol32.exe seemed to be the answer.

Don't forget, if you search for  sndvol32.exe in your hard drive, do not have folder extensions hidden.

Richard