Vol Control-speaker-Icon missing from Tray @ Bootup, why?

[techwanabe]

Guys and Gals,

When I boot up my system, more often than not, the volume control icon (speaker icon) is missing from that taskbar tray on the right side. Therefore there is no volume control! If I try to run Baldurs Gate and that icon is missing, I get a black screen and a hard lockup. If the speaker icon is present, every thing works great. So this is a problem I'd like to get rid of.

Usually if the system has been off for the day, and I first boot up, the speaker icon is missing from the WIN98 desktop tray at the bottom right hand. I go into START and choose SHUTDOWN, RESTART, then the speaker icon will usually appear in the tray (on reboot) when the desktop comes up. Once I had to restart the system a 3rd time to get the speaker icon to show up! This is driving me crazy but I can't think of any solutions.

At first I thought if my speakers were turned off, the system wouldn't load the speaker icon, but I tried booting up with the speakers on and it didn't change anything. I sure could use some suggestions.

 

[Viper GTS]

The volume control is only loaded if a valid sound device is installed. Your sound card drivers may be f'd up...

Viper GTS

 

[hubbs]

That happened to me once. But I went into the Sound Properties and I got it back. Might just be a little bug that popped out of nowhere.

 

[SUOrangeman]

It may not show up if you have "use preferred devices only" as well. At least, this happened to me on occasion with Win95.

-SUO

 

[rickn]

it was probably something you uninstalled, like WinAmp