System icons tray disappears when logging between Windows 10 and 11

Hello Matthias Gabriel,

Thank you for posting on the Microsoft Community Forum.

Based on the description "PS: Tested on clean installations of both Win 10 and 11 with newly created profiles.", are the clean installations of both Win 10 and 11 in the same domain and the same OU with the existing win 11 and win 10?

Are the newly created profiles in the same domain and the same OU with the existing domain users?

If you deploy roaming user profile for one domain user, and sign in one Win 10 client directly (instead of sign in win 11 then sign out win 11 and sign in win 10), does the problem occurs?

Please make sure the win 10 is connected to domain network, and the domain user with roaming profile can access the shared folder stored the roaming user profile data.

According to your description, when you sign out from Windows 11 and sign in to Windows 10 using a roaming profile, the icons in the system tray (such as clock, volume, network, etc.) disappear. In Windows 10, the icon of a roaming profile can be affected by caching. You can try deleting the icon cache to fix this issue on win 10.

1. Open Explorer, navigate to the following path: C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local.
2. Enter Appdata in the address bar and press Enter, then select the Local folder.
3. Make sure the "Hide Items" option is ticked in the "View" tab. Appdate is a hidden folder.
4. In the Local folder, right-click on the IconCache and select Delete.

For more information about roaming profiles, we can refer to the link below.

Deploy roaming user profiles: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/folder-redirection/deploy-roaming-user-profiles

I hope you the information above is helpful.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Best Regards,

Daisy Zhou

Dear Daisy Zhou,

Thank you for your reply.

Both installations, as well as the profiles, are in the same Domain, as well as OU. The issue occurs on both these new machines and profiles, as well as on existing ones.

If the user signs in only to windows 10, there is no issue, system icons are perfectly visible. Only when the same user logs out of windows 11, the system icons disappear when the user logs into windows 10 again (the icons remain visible in Win 11) In windows 10 I can turn the icons back on in taskbar settings and they remain on, until the user logs out of windows 11 again.

The issue does not affect local profiles.

I have deleted IconCache, restarted the Explorer, and re-logged. The icons remain hidden.

I am having this exact issue, users can re-enable them by showing and hiding the icons but as soon as the profile syncs from a windows 11 machine all the icons disappear again until the user re-enables them. the user can log out and back into a windows 10 machine as many times as they want and the icons stay there until they log in and out of a windows 11 machine.

There are some registry keys that can be set but I am not currently having much luck with them at the minute, there is also the option to set them all to show via GPO but we don't need them all showing only clock, network and volume.

My next steps would be to try and locate the folder in the profile that is responsible for causing this and trying to exclude this from synching. Let me know if you find the answer as we are in the same boat at the minute

registry keys you might find useful:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify

I have fiddled around with GPO and some registry, here is what I have found so far:

GPO proved to be useless. There are settings regarding hiding the system icons, however they only work if the icons are enabled. If the clock is already hidden due to Win11, setting the "Hide Clock" to Disabled or unconfigured does not enable them, same with the other icons (but it does hide them if they are enabled.)

By deleting IconStreams and PastIconStreams, I had hoped that Windows would re-create them with default values - which show the clock - but with no luck.
In HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer, I tried to create d-words "HideClock" and setting it to 0, but it had the same issue as editing it in the GPO.

Out of desperation, I have enabled the icons, then exported the entire Explorer registry tree (HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer), disabled the icons, loaded the exported registry and restarted Explorer. To my surprise, the clock was back! I incrementally deleted entries and loaded the .reg until the clock did not show. I do not recommend this method, as it messes with icons pinned on the taskbar, and I'm sure there are some side effects I cannot see immediately. But if you still wish to try this out, the registry keys that remained and worked for me were:

HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams - Settings

HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Streams\Defaults - {24CCB8A6-C45A-477D-B940-3382B9225668}

HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects3 - Settings

I am importing the settings from a .reg file through a .bat file that I placed in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start\Programs\StartUp, so that it launches on every user login (admin privileges are not required, runs fine under any user account).
In the batch file, I provide the path to import the .reg file, kill and then start Explorer.exe for the changes to take effect.

So far, it looks like we will be discontinuing roaming profiles in favor of local profiles with folder redirection.

It is an absolutely terrible "solution" until every PC in the company runs on Win11, but I have not gotten anything else to work unfortunately...