Volume Control is not there

Well folks, I have a Windows 7 Home Edition laptop here that belongs to an 82 year old widow from church that has no Volume Control. The Volume Control is not there. It is listed when I run the Customize option and choose the System icons, but the option is grayed out and cannot be turned on. And wouldn't you know, the sound is turned way up too, so I stuck a plug into the headphone jack to quiet it down. I can't even control the volume with the function key and the appropriate F key. I've tried everything I can find here and every other place Google showed me, but no success. I also uninstalled all the sound drivers, ran the Trouble shooter, but end up in the same boat.
One other thing- I can't get the Computer Icon on the desktop. I can create a shortcut on the desktop, but that's not what I want. Usually there is an option to "Show on desktop", but that is not available. Anyway to fix that? Yeah, I know there is, but I don't know what it is- yet.
Re-installing Windows 7 is not the way I want to go, knowing how it takes days to get all the updates again while the poor thing just sits there and runs and runs. I'd like to get this thing back to the lady as soon as I can, but I'm certainly not breaking any speed records with that task!
I hope someone can come up with a cure for this Dell beast. It's the N7010 model.
Thanks to anyone who can come up with the cure.
Ron K

Funny I didn't get a notice that anyone had replied like I usually do. Anyway, I saw a Rollup update and a couple security updates so I did them. After I rebooted the volume control was back and accessible. I had rebooted it several times before after fiddling with it, but the rollup update fixed it. All set! Thanks for your help!

Look at that! I used 'before' and 'after' right next to each other in the same sentence. Funny, to me anyway.

Harrisburg! We live in Williamsport. We lived in Harrisburg and New Cumberland a couple different times. We moved here from Harrisburg in Sept of 98.