volume control icon missing from system tray

I have vista basic and the volume control icon keeps disappearing form the system tray. I go to properties/notification area and it is normally grayed out. I can reboot in safe mode and the icon shows up. I right click and it asks me to activate windows audio services. I click ok and it usually corrects it on reboot. I am wondering why this keeps happening? It sometimes happens with my battery icon and network icon. I have an acer laptop this keeps happening on. Any info would be great.

 

Your Acer laptop had a lot of extra software on it when new, programs installed by Acer, right? Have you removed any of it? If not, read this: So, you have a new machine shipped with XP/Vista... and do what it says.

I can't guarantee this will solve your problem but it quite likely make your computer run better.

 

Thanks for the link. I will try it tomorrow evening when I have more time and will let you know if it worked.

 

Thanks for the info. helped with a little more speed on my laptop, but still no volume or battery icons. I can't even get them to come back up through safe mode now. As of right now I can access them. I will keep everyone posted with more info. Thanks.

 

I found this website this morning and it worked like a champ

http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/how-to-terminate-and-restart-explorerexe-process-cleanly/

Hope this will help others.

Freddie