Has it happened with you that on starting your Windows 7 or Vista computer, you have found that the system icons, like the Network, Volume or the Power icons do not appear in the notification area ?

If that is the case then this article may interest you!

When you start a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows 7 for the first time, one or more of the following icons do not appear in the notification area in the lower-right corner of the screen.

• The Network icon

• The Volume icon

• The Power icon

You may also notice that the check boxes for the related system icons are not selected on the Notification Area tab of the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box. However, the network, volume, and power features function correctly even though their associated icons do not appear in the notification area. You can access these features by using Control Panel.

If you gave your computer enough time to finish the startup service initializations before you restarted it, and one or more of the system icons still do not appear in the notification area after the restart, you can make them reappear by deleting two subkeys from the registry.

You can edit the registry manually as described on WinVistaClub or you can now can download & apply this Microsoft Fix It solution and let Microsoft fix the issue for you.