Fix messed up Notification Area Icons in Windows

Notification area in Windows operating system provides notifications and status messages from different programs. It also displays icons for certain system and program features. Sometimes those notification area icons get messed up and wrong icons starts to appear in the taskbar. Take a look at the screenshot image below. The icon for VLC media player is wrong and certain icons (icon for IDM, Aestan Tray Menu and Windows Explorer) are missing. Wrong or missing notification area icon is not a serious problem. But it can be annoying and distracting. If you want to solve this problem, follow the steps mentioned in this page.

Steps to solve Wrong Notification Area icons problem:

The Windows notification area gets messed up due to some corrupted registry keys.  So, the notification icons can be refreshed simply by removing the corrupted keys. You can do that by following these simple steps:

1. Open Run in your computer (Press Windows key+R).
2. In the field named open: type regedit and press OK button.
3. The Windows Registry will appear. In the Registry, navigate to the following directory: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify
4. Select the following keys – IconStreams and PasteIconStreams. Right click while the two keys remain selected and select Delete from the context menu that appear.
5. Exit Windows Registry Editor and restart your computer.

After restarting your computer, you should see the proper icons in the Windows notification area.