Since upgrading to SP2, I've had a problem with the power and volume taskbar icons occassionally not showing up when windows starts.  Occassionally, other items in my startup folder would also not appear in the taskbar or would not be started correctly.

 

While the problem did not occur all the time, I am happy to state that I seem to have solved the issue and have verified it on two seperate machines.  When windows first loads and you see the windows logon screen, STOP.  Wait 30seconds or so -- the bottom line is, wait till all hard drive activity has stopped for 10 seconds or so.  Once this is done, login on and all will be fine.

 

I consistently find that if I logon while the hard-disk LED is active that I have the problem.  I would love to know why this happens and why this workaround works...