Systray Getting me Mad - Pleeeeeease Help

I am currently tracking this issue in our software. Could you start a support ticket for this matter? Please send it to support@stardock.com and remember to list this forum post as part of it? This way I can compile more info for our developers.

Thanks much.

ananzjo: we're activly looking in to it, hope to have it working for you for the next release.

Quick few questions and a few steps that you can follow, if you wish...

Are you running Windows Vista? If so, is UAC enabled? And if so, does the problem go away when UAC is disabled? Also if UAC is enabled, you're not doing anything special to run explorer "as administrator" I assume? (doing so would definitely make it not work)

Also, MCP is no longer needed for tray functionality and might get in the way. After you've gone through the steps above to diagnose, I'd also recommend trying to get rid of SDMCP. In the next version I hope to include something that will take of this automatically. But anyways for diagnosis sake... End it's process, and go ahead and find the SDMCP exe and dll.... and rename them (put and "_old" after their filenames, so you can restore it later if you really need to). You can find SDMCP files in your "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Stardock" directory. Files you'll want to rename.... "mcpcore.dll" and "sdmcp.exe". (You can't just delete them as they will be "in use", but you should be able to rename them fine.) At this point, do a reboot, and they will no longer be in use. Try ObjectDock's SystemTray out then (preferably with UAC off if on Vista, but you can try it with it on too if you do in fact use UAC). Knowing if this fixes the problem for you or not would definitely help the situation for you and others as well


Sorry for the hassle, hopfully this will be up and running for you soon. Thank you!

Best Regards,
-Jeff Bargmann
ObjectDock Lead Developer

Just jumping on here with the same issue described; thanks so much for attacking this one personally, Jeff. I'm not sure about the original poster, but I'm having the exact same issue on XP Tablet; at first I thought it might have been a problem with a different version of SDMCP loaded into the Prefetch folder; that apparently didn't do it. I tried renaming mcpcore, the mcp executrable, and mcpstub (for good measure?), rebooting, and nothing's changed. Tried it with OD set to load at startup, tried it without. Tried changing the dock contents setting to a non-systray function, unload/reload, re-enabling; nothing.

Are you saying that MCP is no longer needed for systray functionality just under Vista, or should this have worked on my XP machine as well?

Could this have anything to do with running Explorer windows as separate processes?

FWIW, I'm running OD+ & XP without SDMCP and the tray is working fine...

I can't make heads or tails of it. I figured I'd have a look through my registry and sure enough there were still invalid shared component entries; references to the files I'd renamed to nullify (see above). Fixed those, made sure OD was going to load at startup to best have a chance at hooking the notification area (i.e. "systray"), rebooted, still nothing.

I realize I may have complicated things with a simultaneous install of DesktopX, which may be the whole reason I had SDMCP components to begin with, but I'm not aware of the operation of either in enough depth to say much about it. I can put out there that it was DesktopX rather than OD which was responsible for the prefetch entry for SDMCP, and I might just try ripping out DesktopX altogether to see if its startup routines may be preventing OD from catching things properly.

Oh, one other thing, I can't figure out precisely why, but every time I quit out of OD a system generic "beep" sound is played, but without any windows or messages. I'll check the Event Log.

I've had a problem with the systray as well. I have two normal docks, and one drawer-tabbed dock. One for my running programs (Taskbar) and one for my Systray. I've tried a few different things. (Remove, Reboot, Reinstall.) and still haven't been able to get my systray to show at all. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

i also have that problem.. i whant my taskbar away but then i don't have systrays.. its very inoing ... hope that someone find it quickly.. :s:s
greadz PuDDyN

There was a new version posted on Stardock Central the 7th. Have you updated yet? You must have "Show pre-release versions" checked to see it. Version 1.9h[b].019

This worked great for me,maybe some can try this if they have not done so yet.

If you have SDC make sure in the tools tab you click on settings and in the general setting you have both of the "enable mcp" boxes UNchecked,then go into your program files folder and in the stardock folder you go into the objectdock folder and in there find the file "stardocktray.dll" and copy this file somewhere in a different folder so you can retrieve this file if this solution does not work.Now that you have done this REname the file"stardocktray.dll" to anything you like (I used junk for example).Now once that is done Reboot system,when you are all back up and running(make sure OD+ is not going to start up automatically and is not runnig at all)Now go into program folder and in the stardock folder go into objectdock folder and now delete "stardocktray.dll>renamed "junk",now the file no longer resides in that folder.Last part,start up SDC and check mark both ENABLE MCP and then make sure OD+ is setup to automatically load on start up,Now REBOOT the system and when it all is loaded up you should now have your systray icons showing.

I tried that and sadly it didn't work. Is it because I had 1.5 and I'm using Vista?