Normally you can just turn these on by going to the Task Bar and Start Menu properties, then selecting them in the Notification area. When I have tried this these options have been grey and I’m unable to change them. After digging around I have found a solution for this bug. If you have also experienced this problem I will explain how to remedy this with a few screenshots.

The problem as highlighted above is that the System icons do not load up. We first start by opening the Task Manager, either by CTRL + ALT + DEL, or by searching for “taskmgr” in the Windows search bar.

Once we’ve loaded this, we want to kill the process, “explorer.exe”. As shown below, right click on that process and choose to end it.

As this process is critical to the operating system, we need to run the process again, simply by clicking “File” in the top left, and choosing New Task (Run…).

We then simply create the new process “explorer.exe” and click OK.

Then, as if by magic, your icons will be restored in their rightful place and you can then check them and uncheck them as you would normally in the Task Bar and Start Menu properties.

Unfortunately this bug hasn’t been squashed by the Vista dev team in the new release of SP1, but hopefully there will be a permanent fix in the future for this.

Although upgrading Vista from XP about 6 months ago was initially a pain in the ass with compatibility issues and the like, as soon as updates came out, I have loved working with Vista ever since. It is a beautiful creation, and to me just far more intuitive to use than a Mac. I’m not saying you should buy Vista, I am simply saying that it works for me and my needs.

That’s what I love about competition as a consumer. We are free to choose between XP, Vista, Leopard or even Linux. I think this is a broad enough choice for all people needed an operating system, and I don’t understand the need for fierce fanboy rivalry which I see so often on the likes of Digg.com.

I mean this morning when I was about to start work, I turned on my laptop and managed to tidy my whole room, make my bed, sort the bins out before I had to enter my password on the login screen. I mean what other OS allows you that kind of personal time to do other things! I can’t wait for the Vista SP1 to be rolled out in a few weeks time. Apparently it fixes a lot of the bugs which I notice on a daily basis, and is a welcome upgrade!

Now I’m up and running, I suppose I’ll have to get on with some work!