There has been a problem reported by one of our readers that the “Hide Inactive Icons” option which comes in the Taskbar and Start Menu properties has been greyed out while the taskbar is showing all the icons and are not getting hidden.

This is what you can do to solve the problem

1.    Download the registry value from here and double click the file to merge it in the registry (extract it first).

2.    Open Run box, type gpedit.msc to enter the Group Policy Editor.

•    Navigate to the following path User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Start Menu and Taskbar

•    Ensure that Turn off notification area cleanup option is set to Not Configured.

•    Ensure that Hide the notification area option is set to Not Configured.

3.    This one is the last but an important step.

•    Hide any one of the icons to “Always Hide” (this has been reported to solve the problem many times).

To do that go to Taskbar and Start Menu Properties, click on Customize and choose any icon to set “Always Hide”.

This should have solved the problem.