Icon in notification area on Windows XP

[Paul_I]

Ever since I've had aMSN, after running it for perhaps 5 or 10 minutes the icon in the notification area (the area by the clock) the icon will seem to decide it is inactive and will hide itself.  I can right click on the toolbar go to Properties -> Customize and change the aMSN entry behaviour in the list from "Hide when inactive" (which it normally ends up being set to) or "Always hide" (which I think it is rarely set to) to "Always show" (as I want it to be) but then either whilst aMSN is still running (perhaps after some time) or when I've exited and run it again later on (perhaps even the next day) it seems to reset itself, changing back to either "Hide when inactive" (often) or "Always hide" (rarely).  I've lost count of how many times I've had to change the setting to "Always show" (as I want it to be) and it is starting to get a bit tedious now so I was wondering if there is a setting I've perhaps missed somewhere to stop this happening?  This sort of thing doesn't happen with other applications or programs running, only aMSN.  I've also noticed, and double-checked just now, that when you change your nickname it appears on the icon pop-up, as expected, but changing the nickname also seems to mean the setting changes in customize.  Something is wrong somewhere.  This doesn't happen with Windows Live Messenger, nor any other unofficial messenger clients.

Help appreciated, and thanks in advance for replies.

[alexandernst]

Can you tell me what is the tooltip of the trayicon?

To see the tooltip just place the cursor over the icon of aMSN (the one in tre tray are) and wait a few seconds until you see a small yellow box with some text).
Then change your nick and see if the text of the tooltip has changed.

[Paul_I]

I'd rather not tell you the exact text of the tooltip, but it basically shows like this;

Current nickname - (eMail address): Status

Current nickname will only show in the tooltip up to a certain amount of characters - I normally have my display name there (e.g: Paul) follow by a space, followed by a hypen followed by some text if I want to put any text there (e.g: "aMSN rocks! :)"), so putting "testing testing testing" in 10 times after the hypen and space results in the tooltip just showing the nickname only, and the rest just drops off it (although this is probably an Operating System [Windows XP] issue).

eMail address, perhaps obviously, never changes, and is located in brackets.

Status, well, shows the status.

I can confirm that changing ones nickname does cause the text of the tooltip to change and then causes what is effectively a new entry in the Customize Notifications options.

Thanks.

[alexandernst]

Well, that certainly is a weird problem, iirc the first one like that that I remember since I have been around here. You could try to right click on a blank area on your taskbar, then go to properties, then untick "Hide inactive icons". If some unwanted icons show up, just hide them individualy by setting the correct rules.

[Paul_I]

That doesn't work as once you untick Hide inactive icons the Customize... button becomes unclickable.