ptalar,

Thank you for contacting the Dell Community Forums.  Take a look at this Microsoft KB Article, and see if the steps listed in the article resolve your issue. 

The next time you boot up and the icon has disappeared, try logging off and back on.  If that causes the missing systray icon(s) to reappear, then your issue is very common (more so on laptops are slow hard drives).  I have been dealing with it since XP SP2 was released (in fact, I posted here describing the issue within a week of SP2s arrival).  I have "fixed" the problem by upgrading to a new operating system, but there is a whole site dedicated to this issue:

http://winhlp.com/node/16

Primary solutions are:

1) Wait a few minutes before logging on (and disable auto-logon) -- this usually causes all icons to appear correctly.

2) Long off and back on -- this usually always works (and wastes about as much time as option #1)

3) Disable UPNP and SSDP (or at least prevent UPNP devices from appearing in network places)

4) Apply a user-made patch to shell32.dll (This was developed a long after I migrated from XP -- I cannot confirm whether it works or not).

None of the approaches worked in both replies.  I guess I have to live with it..  Thanks for your help.  It was very educational.

Phil

This might be a long shot, but as the other suggestions didn't work;

(1) Right click the start button, click on properties, click on the taskbar tab. If the "HIDE INACTIVE ICONS" is checked, uncheck it ans see if your icons return. If checked, you can also click "customize" and unselect the volume control icon as not to be hidden.

(2) You could also try putting a shortcut to "systray.exe" in your start-up folder. (Kind of a last resort, but should work).

(3) This usually fixes a host of related problems.

Right-click on My Computer
Click on "Manage"
Expand 'Services & Applications'
Highlight 'Services'
Look through list of services on the right....
Find Universal Plug & Play Device Host
Right-click on it.
Click properties.
Change startup type to 'Disabled'
Do exactly the same with 'SSDP discovery service'
Restart the system.

There is one more fix, a little obscure, but hey...

One person reported have this exactly same condition and resolved it by discovering that the 'desktop' was loading twice in the startup folder. He fixed it by removing one instance of the desktop. One was named "common user" and the other was not named. He deleted the "common user" instance and that fixed it (and as a bonus, the system booted faster.

If none of those worked, try resetting the timing of the boot order.

Start, right click on My Computer, choose Manage.

Under Services and Applications choose Services, set both SSDP Discovery Service and Universal Plug and Play Host to "disabled". 

Reboot.

Go back and set both to "automatic" and reboot.

Fix 3 worked.  Thank You very much.  I appreciate.