Notification Area – The Tray Manager Lost Selection

Have you ever booted up your Xfce4 Linux system and seen that error notice?

Well, if you have, you’re not the only one out there. Ever wonder what causes that annoying bugaboo? Me too. I’ve narrowed it down to the point where I think it’s caused by a couple of theme packages I have installed. I can’t definitively reproduce the effect, though.

When this notice comes up on your system, if you’ll check the Xfce4 Task Manager (or top @ the command line),  you’ll find that you have two instances of xfce4-panel running. Open your Xfce4 Session Manager and under the Sessions tab, you’ll see it there also. Delete one instance if xfce4-panel in your Session Manager, then Save (see Figure 1).

That’s it. Once you reboot, you shouldn’t see that annoying Notification Area error message again.

Figure 1

As stated above, if you do see two instances of the xfce4-panel, just click on one of them with your mouse to highlight, then click on Quit Program at the lower right. After you’ve done that, click on Save Session on the lower left side.

I hope someone finds this info useful.

Later…

~Eric