My icon doesn't disappear; Windows just likes to forget I have it set on "always show" and makes it "hide when inactive" with no rhyme or reason that I can see.
you need to set the "always show" option in the taskbar properties window while MC is inactive.
you will notice that if you open the taskbar properties window while a track is playing, MC is listed in the "name" column with the current track details.
windows will treat this, and all other tracks, as seperate instances.
stop playback, and then you will see it in the list as simply "media center 11" and this is the one you want to set to "always show"
It might not stop it from auto-hiding completely, but should go a long way towards reducing the shyness of the tray icon.
Mr. ChriZ, I'm not sure. In my experience, when MC crashes, it leaves a "dead" icon in the tray, and it will disappear when you mouse over it.
Sometimes, you can bring back missing tray icons by using the task manager to kill explorer.exe, then use "new task" to restart explorer.exe, it does not always work mind you. Have you checked in your system and application event logs to see if there are any clues in there?
A disappearing tray icon is not something I've seen here before.