Hardware removal icon missing from systray after Intel RST removed.

I have a P8Z77-V LK with two hot-swap bays. After a fresh install on this new system about 8 months ago I set BIOS to allow hot-swap of these two bays. Everything worked fine for a few months then I had the bright idea that, when prompted by Intel's Rapid Storage Technology to update, I would remove this utility simply to see if it was of any worth keeping. After this I noted I no longer see the manager icon in the systray for these bays but it does still pop up and work for any USB drives which are connected. As a test I did reinstall Intel RST but the swapping function remains broken for the bays.

I checked BIOS and all setting still seem to be correct; AHCI enabled along with hot-swapping for these drive bays. Is there a simple fix for this as I found the Win7 utility to be full adequate or should I simply opt for one of the available free utilities (HotSwap, etc.)?

Can also add that I do use dual-boot with the other bootable partition basically cloned and that one, not having ever removed Intel RST, still recognizes the removable bays as hot-swappable.

Any insight appreciated.

Thanks for the reply TVelben!

I just ran the sfc scan in "verifyonly" mode and it found no integrity violations.

One more thing I can add is that I did placed on the desktop the following shortcut "%windir%\system32\RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll" which allows me to manually open the Windows USB/Hotswap manager. Even with drives mounted in both of the HS bays the manager does not display either whereas it did prior to me removing IRST.

Now, in case I decide to add a hot swap utility would anyone like to suggest a decent "free" one compatible with Win7/AHCI? The last time I used the utility "HotSwap" it was with XP in IDE so not even sure if it's applicable. Going to research that now. I also have reservation that even a 3rd party utility may not recognize the hot swap enabled internal drives for the same reason Window doesn't.

Not wholly "solved" but I did decide to install the HotSwap! utility for a very seamless and even more feature rich work-around. Functions a charm just as it did when last used with XP.

I just wanted to add a curious update as an FYI.

Doing some housecleaning of the computer I decided I wanted to get rid of the IRST software package and simply install the associated AHCI driver. Now recall, I noted having remove the IRST package previously in an attempt to cure my missing hardware removal icon, which it did not, nor did reinstalling the software. This time around removal of the IRST package surprisingly put back in working mode the Windows hardware removal icon for all drives hot swap enabled in BIOS along with any connected external drives.

Now if I can find on the Intel website (which I have not been able to) just the AHCI driver that comes bundled with the IRST software I'd prefer to install it. Any subsequent checking to see if the Windows hardware removal utility remains would simply be out of curiosity as I've renewed my affinity for HotSwap! and will continue to use it instead.