Topic: God damn it, stupid Windows question

[WindAndConfusion]

I had a reboot via power failure, and now my network status icon is gone from Vista's taskbar. (If you don't know what I mean, it's the little icon that shows two computers and a globe when you're connected to the Internet, or two computers and no globe when you're connected to a LAN but not the Internet.) As it happens, my Internet connection has been ridiculously unstable lately (thanks Cox, your name saves me the trouble of pointing it out), so this is rather a pain.

I looked under network settings. No dice. Then I tried the taskbar settings. I found a menu with a list of all the things that might appear in my taskbar, together with options for what to do with them, but the network status icon was curiously absent.

Google didn't help, but maybe I'm just searching for the wrong terms. I'd rather not have to go dicking through my registry. Help?

[WindAndConfusion]

Fuck it, System Restore.

[Cobra951]

That has pulled my fat out of the fire several times.  I did read your post earlier, but without Vista experience or similar XP experience, I had to punt.

[Ghandi]

Quick Google search. I'm guessing that you tried this, though.

[WindAndConfusion]

I did not see that, even though at one point it was directly in front of me. Still, a lot of the blame for that goes to Microsoft's terrible fucking UI designs and their fetish for making it so that there's only ever ONE way of doing anything (and their equally disgusting fetish for changing that method with every fucking version of the OS).

I'm having a seriously bad day with Microsoft, by the way. I'm wishing I could spend a few hours locked in a room with Steve Ballmer, a computer running any version of Windows, and a crowbar. We would have a vigorous discussion about the do's and don't's of UI design.

[scottws]

I was going to suggest that, but it sounded like you didn't try it so I didn't bother.

Wait until that little network status icon breaks and it says you are disconnected from any network 100% of the time.  That's fun.  I was battling that one for a month and the only way I was able to solve it was through Microsoft's official support (thank you Partner status!).

Seems to be a fairly common problem with Vista eventually.  One of my co-workers has had it for about six months now and like I said I just got it about a month ago.  Google searches show lots of people with the problem, but not really many solutions.  Some are thrown out there but they don't seem to work very often.