Red X In System Tray - Caused By Incoming Connections
I recently upgraded from Vista Ultimate 32 Bit to Windows 7 Ultimate. Nowthe network icon in my system tray always displays with red x over the top of it even when I am connected to the network. Mousing over the icon displays a tooltip with the word Home on one line followedby the words Internet access in italics on asecond line.I have four network connection listingsas follows: Local Area Connection (via Realtek 8319 10/100 port built into motherboard) conncted to Netopia3347 ADSL router Office (VPN Connection to Windows SBS Server 2003) Home Office(VPN Connection to XP Pro computer) Incoming Connections (configured for VPN only has I removed themodem from the computer during an upgrade) After trying different things to try and fix the issue I noticed a post on a different forum where someone had experienced this same issue and gotten the red x to go away by deleting their Incoming Connections listing. I just checked on my computer and when I deleted the Incoming Connectionslisting the red x imediatly went away.When I recreated the icon the red x stayed away, but only until I restarted the Network List service (some one else had solved there red x issue by having this service restart after startup via a script) at which time it came back.It appears that when you havea Windows 7 computer configured to accept incoming network connection the system tray icon for networking will always display a red x when no incoming VPN connections are active.Is there a way to get the get the red x to not appear without removing the Incoming Connections entry or could I have run into bug in Windows 7?
December 6th, 2009 6:26am

Hi, I have also checked this issue by creating an Incoming Connection, but the issue didnt occur. At this time, please try the following to check the issue: 1. Ensure that your NIC driver is up-to-date. 2. After the issue occurs, please end the explorer.exe process in Task Manager and restart explorer.exe and check how it works. 3. Reset the permission ============= Note: Please perform a full system backup first. 1) Please download the subinacl.msi file from the following link and save the installation patch on the Desktop: SubInACL (SubInACL.exe) 2) Please go to the Desktop and double click the downloaded file. 3) Please select the C:\Windows\System32 folder as the Destination Folder during the installation. Later we will use this tool to reset the permission settings on the current machine. Note: If UAC (User Account Control) window is prompted for permission to continue, please click "Continue". 4) Click "Start". In the Start Search bar, type: "notepad" (without quotes)and press Enter. 5) Copy the following commands and then paste them into the opened Note padwindow: @echo off subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f subinacl /subdirectories %windir%\*.* /grant=administrators=f subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=system=f subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=system=f subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=system=f subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=system=f subinacl /subdirectories %windir%\*.* /grant=system=f @Echo ========================= @Echo Finished. @Echo ========================= @pause 6) After pasting the above commands, please close the Notepad window. Choose Save when you are prompted to save the file. Type "reset.bat" as the file name and choose Desktop from the left panel as the save location. 7) Refer to the Desktop and right click the reset.bat file, then choose "Run as administrator." 8) You will see a DOS-like window processing. NOTE: It may take several minutes. When it is finished, you will be prompted with the message: "Finished, press any key to continue". 3. Run the following command in an elevated command prompt to restore the security settings: secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\inf\defltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose How do I restore security settings to the default settings? Hope this helps. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
December 11th, 2009 1:49pm

Hi, I have also checked this issue by creating an Incoming Connection, but the issue didnt occur. At this time, please try the following to check the issue: I tried end tasking explorer.exe and restaring it, but that yeilded no change in the icon. I then followed your steps under Reset the permission and restarted the computer, but the were was no change. After the icon displayed with the rotating blue Windows 7 circle ontop for a few seconds it went back to showing with the red x. I have the latest driver for my NIC.
December 15th, 2009 8:21am

Hi, I have double checked this issue and it occurred on my test machines as well. I have reported this issue to our feedback team. Thanks again for your time and efforts. Nicholas Li - MSFT
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
December 21st, 2009 8:58am

Hi there,I have just done a full clean install of 7 x64 on a friends machine and experienced this exact issue. Out of interest I then went on to install 7 x86 in a VM and also had the exact same issue.I hope this feedback helps.
January 5th, 2010 2:57am

Hi, Thank you for your feedback. This issue has been reported and I will keep you updated. Thanks again. Have a nice day!Nicholas Li - MSFT
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
January 5th, 2010 12:29pm

Hi, Thank you for your feedback. This issue has been reported and I will keep you updated. Thanks again. Have a nice day! Nicholas Li - MSFT Hi Nicholas, How will we know when this fix is available? Through a MS update / MS Knowledge base, etc? Is there anyway the public can track this reported issue?Cheers
January 18th, 2010 9:28pm

I too am affected by this issue, and would also appreciate very much to know if there was some tracking information for if/when a hotfix comes out. Red X is bugging me :)
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
January 31st, 2010 10:30am

Awesome, I -knew- it had to be a bug :) I'd love to know when a hotfix is released for this. I can imagine it's not high priority seeing it's really an aesthetic thing and doesn't appear to affect functionality (at least I haven't had any issues yet), but still, it's an ugly stain on my otherwise beautiful tray :).
February 4th, 2010 7:36pm

BUMP! This is still a problem on any Vista/7 PC I've worked on... any update on a fix?
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
April 18th, 2010 11:54pm

it's an ugly stain on my otherwise beautiful tray Also waiting for a fix.
May 14th, 2010 3:20pm

I am also awaiting a fix. Furthermore, when I have an incoming VPN connection established, it works just fine, however, when I look at the status (in the "adapter" page within network sharing), it shows "IPv4 not connected" and "IPv6 not connected", but "media state connected". It always shows "0 bytes sent, 0 bytes received" even though I am actively transferring files over the VPN. Clicking on "Details" results in a blank page within Details. Something is definitely wrong in Win 7 (I'm using 64-bit, but I expect the problem will also be in 32-bit as well).
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
May 31st, 2010 5:27am

Come on Microsoft bods... you've had literally AGES to sort this out now!!! At least let us know if you're working on it or not.
May 31st, 2010 12:23pm

This is solved here: http://www.spiders-design.co.uk/fix-wrong-network-icon-in-windows-7/
Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 11th, 2010 11:36am

This topic is archived. No further replies will be accepted.

Other recent topics Other recent topics