Welcome to Just Ask Matt! - The IT industry’s answer to the help column, only slightly more medicated. Today, Wayne writes:

Matt, I’ve been using these crazy machines since the mid-eighties - it has been a love/hate affair from being self-taught on DOS to Windows XP Pro. I am having a problem with icons (of all things) in the tray. I load several small programs at startup; for example Magic Mail Monitor, which I use to censor spam. It loads and runs fine - but the icon does not show up in the tray, as it is supposed to. I’ve been using this little gem for several years, with no glitches. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Assuming I am understanding you correctly, it sounds like your Magic Mail Monitor program is running, yet it is not showing up right in the system tray next to the clock. OK, as I am not sure if other system tray icons are showing up or not I am going to assume that they are not. Cruise down to your Taskbar and right click, then select Properties. Once the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties box pops up, look at the “Hide inactive icons” check box. Is it checked? If it is, try unchecking it. Now keep in mind that if you want some of the inactive icons to disappear, then leave it checked and click “customize.” Then look for the icon for Magic Mail Monitor. Choose the icon behavior that you want it to perform (hide or not).

If everything here jives, then go into the Magic Mail Monitor program settings and make sure that there was not some sort of setting that has been tripped up making it so the icon is not visible when the computer boots up. It does happen sometimes; programs are weird like that. ;o)

Do you have an IT-related question? Perhaps you are just burnt out on writing on the walls with crayons? Whatever the comments may be, drop me a line and you, too, can “Just Ask Matt!”