Icons don't always appear in system tray- driver issue?  

I'm not entirely sure I posted in the right forum; please forgive me if I did post incorrectly.

I recently upgraded from Vista to 7 Home Premium, 64-bit. Sometimes, when I boot up my computer, the only icons that appear in my system tray (not the hidden tray accessed by clicking the up-arrow, but the one that has only white icons) are my battery indicator and the date and time. The Action Center (flag icon), wireless, and speaker icons are all absent. If I reboot my computer about 6 or 7 times, the icons appear again.

Also, when I have this absent-icon problem, some programs do not load into the hidden icon panel (mostly, this has been the case with Vuze, as far as I have noticed). I'm not sure it's related, but I figured since the problems usually coincide, I figured I would mention it.

Thanks in advance for any help! The people who have helped me before are great!

If you want applications there, you have to make sure they are set to start with the startups.

1. Make a shortcut of the application on the desktop
2. Into Start/search, type shell:startups and hit Enter. That will bring up the startup folder.
3. Drag the application icon from the desktop into that folder. Close the startup folder.

That will start the said application during system boot and the application icon should show in the notification area or in the box accessible by the up-arrow. If you want it to show on the taskbar, you can either drag it there or use the method that Richard proposed.

Thank you both for your replies. I had tried the methods that richc46 mentioned before I posted, and I have them set properly. The thing is, sometimes they are there, and sometimes they are not (more often, they are not). I have gone to the customization menu when the icons have been missing, and when they are missing, the missing icons are actually grayed-out (unclickable/adjustable). When they icons are in my system tray, they aren't grayed out, and I can play with them, but when this is the case, I don't need to play with them. Vuze, as well, appears in my hidden icons tray sometimes, and other times it doesn't. I have it set so that it appears whenever it is running, but sometimes, it just doesn't appear (although I can't access the program when it doesn't appear in the hidden icons tray, it does show up as running in the task manager). Sorry, I probably should have mentioned all this at the outset.

Whs, when I search for shell:startups in the start-menu search bar, nothing appears. Is this indicative of another problem on my system?

Whs, when I search for shell:startups in the start-menu search bar, nothing appears. Is this indicative of another problem on my system?

Sorry, I think I added an "s" too many. It is actually shell:startup - without the "s" at the end. Sorry, maybe you can try again.

Hi, if the above excellent help doesn't fix it for you, you could try this also.

Hi, did you ever manage to fix this issue? I'm having the exact same problem with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit on an iMac (through Boot Camp), where sometimes when I start up the notification area icons will be invisible. They still take up space on the notification area and so I can hover over them, but they are invisible, like in this screenshot.