Desktop Secretary Will Not Minimise To System Tray

Deaktop Secretary is an old programe by Spotmau that I like due to its simplicity. I installed it on Win 11 Pro a couple of months ago and it worked just fine. Using Task scheduler I made it run on startup and when it is minimised it went to the system tray. Note the arguement /background.



Everything worked perfectly until recently. It may have been broken by a Windows update. Now I can't find it in the system tray. If I launch it from the programe menu it works fine. But when I press the minimise button the window disappears. I can't see it in the system tray. I can find it running in Task manager, but the only way i can launch the window is from the programe list.

Is there any way I can get it to run in the system tray like before?

Kind regards
Chris

Other than trying uninstall and re-install I have nothing else to advise. I would use Revo Uninstaller free to uninstall it, making sure to scan for and delete all leftover items Revo finds. Then restart and reinstall it. That old app dates 2008 so who knows how later versions of 11 are dealing with it.

Setting > personalize > other system tray icons

You can turn on or off what icons are listed in the taskbar

Maybe it is listed in there but is set to off.

Thank you both for your replies.

glasskutter. I have already uninstaled and reinstaled but without using Revo Uninstaller. No change.

KevTech. Good suggestion. When I start the PC, using Task manager, I can see Desktop Secretary runing in the background. But its not in the system tray or anywhere else. I have to manually launch it. Desktop Swecretary is listed under taskbar system tray icons. It's always off when I start the PC. If I toggle it to on, off and on again again nothing happens. However, if I manually launch the app and then do the toggling it will appear in the system tray. But at the next startup it will be gone and I will have to go through the proocedure again.

I have a hunch that its not running as administrator anymore and that is causing the problem.

Kind regards
Chris

Check for an update

Desktop Secretary by Spotmau Corporation

Desktop Secretary for Windows

Rollback_Jockey, thank you for the suggestion. As far as I am aware, I am using the latest version. I don't think there have been any updates since 2008.

I have a gut feeling the problem is not launching as administrator, although I have configured it to do that. In the past I used to get a UAC prompt on startup if I wanted to run this programe. Now I don't see that prompt anymore. I will keep trying.

Kind regards
Chris

Thank you all for your help. I finally got it to work again as before. I did many things. I think the main problem was that Desktop Secretary was not launching properly on startup. I went to Task scheduler and checked all the settings by changing them and afterwards moving back to the original settings and clicking OK.

Kind regards
Chris

Update: Unfortunately the same problem ocurred again. After some time "Desktop Secretary" was running in the background but was missing from the system tray. After receiving some advice from a Microsoft Forum, the solution was quite simple. In Task scheduler I had to delay for 30 or 60 seconds. Now it loads properly every time without any problems. This may be helpful to anyone else experiencing similar issues with "Task Scheduler".

Kind regards
Chris

Chris Nicola said:

Update: Unfortunately the same problem ocurred again. After some time "Desktop Secretary" was running in the background but was missing from the system tray. After receiving some advice from a Microsoft Forum, the solution was quite simple. In Task scheduler I had to delay for 30 or 60 seconds. Now it loads properly every time without any problems. This may be helpful to anyone else experiencing similar issues with "Task Scheduler".

Kind regards
Chris

Click to expand...

Hi, Chris.

When creating a custom Schedule, especially one that is scheduled to run at Startup — It’s always best to add a delay (in my opinion, of course). Otherwise it’s just adding one more thing to the Startup load, which is already quite a lot.

Good job finding an answer