How to recover the volume or sound icon to your Windows taskbar

Posted on August 24, 2007 at 9:55 am

Make sure to read other posts from the Audio Tutorials series!

  1. How to capture, save, record or download streaming audio for free
  2. How to extract audio from AVI, WMV, MPEG, FLV, MOV video files for free
  3. How to rip an audio cd and convert WMA files to MP3 for free
  4. How to recover the volume or sound icon to your Windows taskbar
  5. How to record cassette tapes to PC/Computer

Don’t you hate it when need to adjust the volume on your computer only to find that the icon is missing from your taskbar? Here’s a quick tip that I thought I would write since it happens to me all the time! The process for getting back your volume icon is not very complicated, so here it goes!

First, click on Start and then Control Panel to get to the computer settings:

Next, click on the Sounds and Audio Devices icon in the Control Panel. If you don’t see the icon, you may be in Category View. Switch to Classic View by clicking the first option at the top left.

Personally, I like Classic View better since it’s easier to get to what you want quickly. Once you open the dialog, you should already be on the Volume tab.

You’ll notice the “Place volume icon in the taskbar” option is either checked or unchecked. If it’s already checked and the icon is not showing up, you need to uncheck the box, and then click Apply. Re-check the box and then click Apply again. Now your icon should appear in the taskbar.

That’s it! Sometimes this happens a lot, especially after you restart your computer or log off. If It it keeps disappearing over and over again, you need to update the driver for your sound card. You can do this by going to the computer manufacturer’s web site and downloading it from there, i.e. Dell support, etc.

Any questions, post a comment!

[tags]how to recover sound icon, how to recover volume icon, windows xp sound icon[/tags]

» Filed Under Computer Tips

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Comments

12 Responses to “How to recover the volume or sound icon to your Windows taskbar”

  1. Rajesh G L said on : March 16th, 2008 at 10:59 am

    you need to copy the sndvol32.exe image from your commercial XP installation media (not a vendor-supplied “recovery” CD-ROM) to the system32 folder by performing the following steps:
    put winxp cd in the cd rom

    Start a command session. click start- run
    type command

    Navigate to the CD-ROM drive by typing
    :
    Navigate to the i386 folder by typing
    cd i386
    Expand the sndvol32.ex_ file by typing
    expand -r sndvol32.ex_ %systemroot%\system32

    if u done successfully… say thkx to glrajesh@yahoo.com


  2. Randy said on : August 2nd, 2008 at 12:26 am

    Thanks for the tip on restoring the volume icon to the taskbar. I am remarkably computer illiterate and was hugely relieved that your simple solution worked. Thanks again.


  3. James said on : October 11th, 2008 at 9:59 am

    My volume icon was missing (among other things), and this actually brought all the missing icons back. Thanks!


  4. Papa G said on : November 6th, 2008 at 1:18 am

    Glrajesh,

    I have done as you suggested however I get an error message
    Can’t open input file: sndvol32.ex_C:\windows\system32.

    How can I resolve this please.


  5. Linnea Hendrickson said on : December 7th, 2008 at 12:27 am

    Thank you! Your solution of unchecking the “show sound” icon, clicking apply, then going back and checking the box again and clicking O.K. worked perfectly, after I’d looked at half a dozen other suggestions on other sites and tried the Microsoft help with no success. Not having the sound icon in the task bar has been driving me nuts for months!


  6. Louise Ivey said on : December 30th, 2008 at 4:27 pm

    I too am missing the sound icon on my taskbar, but as I purchased my computer used online, I do not have a CD.
    Any other solutions?


  7. Jaz said on : March 17th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    The audio icon is missing from my taskbar and I have no sound. Plz help


  8. Tim said on : October 28th, 2009 at 8:33 pm

    I went through the steps from Control Panel to Sounds and Audio Devices. The same screen comes up that you show in the instructions , however, it is grayed out and I can’t check or uncheck anything.

    Thanks.
    Tim


  9. Felicity said on : November 7th, 2009 at 1:54 am

    Thank you sooooo much. I obviously unticked that when muting at some point. It has been annoying me for ages and people posted some ridiculous answers, when you have clearly shown all it takes is a tick in the box to get the volume icon back!


  10. ayas said on : November 10th, 2009 at 12:41 am

    Hi,

    I have a DELL latitude 520 model laptop loaded with Windows XP (SP3). My sound is working perfectly but the icon is not displaying on the task bar. also when the windows starts up i couldn’t hear the defualt start-up sound.the play button for the default sound in Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices Properties > Sounds is greyed out. Please suggest how i will fix this. I have already tried to fix this problem by re-installing the driver but its not working…


  11. calvin said on : November 19th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

    wow. I was going crazy looking for the fix to my volume and network connection status icon for the longest time. I thought i had deleted it or something, but your tip on just going to control panel, sound and audio devices and checking the toolbar, man do i feel stupid! thanks bro, once I did that they both appeared. good tip!


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