
Click “ More details” at the bottom, go to Processes tab, locate the explorer.exe, right-click on it, select End Process from the menu to kill it.

Press the Ctrl + Shift + Escape from the keyboard simultaneously to launch the Task Manager. You could try the follwing tips to resolve the problem.ġ. If the volume icon is missing or won’t show up on tray, and the related setting is greyed out from control panel in Windows 8.1 OS, the issue might be caused by explorer process. Using Restore default icon behaviors didn’t take any effects. When I accessed notification Area Icons in Control Panel and tried to toggle it to show up as active, I got the “This notification icon is not currently active” error message. The audio functioned correctly but the speaker icon has disappeared in taskbar. Everything worked fine since I installed the latest major update on my Windows 8.1 computer.
