XP Trivia

As part of the movement of files from one laptop to the other, I've had to futz with the Windows XP Notification Area. This is one of those things that Microsoft did well... and then apparently said 'Okay, thats done'... except that it wasn't, entirely.

What happened was that the dropdown box in the Behavior column of the Customize Notifications panel stopped dropping down. It wasn't (and isn't) obvious why it stopped; it just did. But I found a post that talked about how to make the silly thing work, anyway.

What you do is select the Taskbar/Properties/Customize option (Customize won't appear unless Hide Inactive Icons is checked), which brings up the Customize Notifications screen. Select the line you want to change, then select just the dropdown box. If the dropdown doesn't drop down, leave the cursor there and hit A on the keyboard. This will (or should: no guarantees) change the text in the box to Always Hide and to Always Show. If you want say 'Hide when inactive', hit H on the keyboard.

Click Apply, and get out of that screen before Windows notices that you've circumvented its stupidity.

Note that if you leave the line, it'll likely show the original value (the one you wanted to change), but its probably changed anyway. Thanks, Microsoft.

Tags: Windows XP Notification Area Customize Cannot Can Not Change Dropdown Always Hide Show