Hi Hengis,
Ok, hopefully, thanks to Cowburn, this is going to be correct and help to shed some light on the matter.
I did download for a "fix it all" taskbar, that was mentioned in another post, but I'm still having to use it every time I boot up, which I don't think will be doing the computer much good in the long run.
I await with eager anticipation, to see if anyone can work this out!!!! It's driving me screwwy! I realise (I hope), that it's not a major problem and that you have other people to deal with, so whenever you can get back is fine.
Best Wishes
Ange

Hello Ange.

Just a question. If you apply, say a wallpaper, does it appear? Or are the icons only missing?

Hello Chiaz,
Everything else, apart from the odd blip, seems to be working. I can change my wallpapers with no problems, it's just the icons that go missing. They aren't there when I first boot the pc up, but sometimes every single one of them appears. I've done nothing to change the set up of the task bar as, up until joining this great forum, I wouldn't have known where to start. I can't even remember when it started happening. I just remember on August 17th I went to safely remove hardware and couldn't find the icon for it. I know it should be there, I've used it before, but even whilst writing this.....it's not there, along with most of the others. I only have 5 showing at this moment in time and they are AVG, Zone Alarm, modem, printer and internet connection. Where the rest are is anybody's guess!

Hi,
I don't know if this is still being looked at, but I'm encountering another problem and don't know if it's related to this.
When I first boot my pc up it's taking absolutely ages before it lets me do anything. I have to wait about 5 minutes or more before it decides how many icons it's putting up.
Just wondered if they are the same problem and, if so, is there anything I can do to speed things up a bit?
Ange

to speed up the boot up process, go here and download ntregopt.exe. Install and run it; it won't touch a key in the registry, which is good, but rather compresses the registry. Next up you may want to check the defrag status of your hard drive and defrag if necessary.

The final step can be done if both of those don't significantly speed up the boot up process.

Thanks,

v