XPS 8700, Dell Update system tray icon

For the past three years every single day I've had 11 icons on my system tray (bottom right of the screen by the clock), among those was an icon installed by Dell, the "Dell Update", it looked like an iverted number 1 and had a white gear on it. Every once in a while the gear would turn green which meant that it was checking for updates.

Right clicking on the iocon would bring up a menu with the following options:

Enable Auto-check, Check for Updates, Dell Online Support, About Dell Update 2.1, Exit Dell Update.

This morning when I booted my system once again my 11 icons were where they are supposed to be, at about 1 pm the gear on the Dell Update icon turned green and then disappeared... poof... gone...

There's no reference to it in the Control Panel>Programs and Features, there is no reference to it in MSCONFIG, there is no reference to it in services.msc, there is no mention of it in the startup items.

I was able to download "Dell Update Application Win 32 V3.0.1" but apparently it requires the user to run it manually instead of running in the background as there is zero indication that it runs when the system starts.

Strangely enough on two Dell laptops with Windows 10, the icons are still there.

I pride myself in knowing my system(s) like the back of my hand, hardware and software alike, and I hhhaaaaaate it when someone interferes with it. I called Dell and they pretty much acted as if I was telling them the strangest story they've ever heard.

System Info:

Dell XPS8700 (Hybrid), Windows 8.1 64 bit, fully patched, 16 GB Ram, 1 Tb O/S HD with 708 Gb free, files stored in 3 separate HDs, 1 Tb ea, nVidia GTX 960 4gb ram GPU, 700 W PSU.

Dell Update System Tray Icon