Ravencajun, I have a question for you. I have my removable disk in and it won't let me safely remove it. The device generic volume cannot be stopped right now keeps coming up. I have my pictures on there and don't want to lose them. I use Ulead Photo Explorer to view them, I have been deleting extra copys on there. I did go to Task Manager and clicked applications and two things were running in there. 1.)Safely remove hardware icon gone in XP C 2.)Ulead Photo Explorer 8.0 F:\ Running. If I stop them will I lose my pictures? Please, could you give me advice on this problem. Thank you.

Thanks, Bob. I do see dots - but not near the notification area. It's in the quick launch area and task bar (which shows I have firefox opened) - just to the right of the start menu. So thanks to you instructions, I was able to drag it all back to the bottom. Good to know that keep task bar on top means showing. Now I'm down to just one problem. the notification icons are displaying in three rows. These rows are taking up 2 regular sized bars. I can get the start, firefox open browser tab and quick launch icons on the top line - but I can't make the bottom line disappear because the notifcation icons are taking up 3 small rows. There are no dots there - and I can't find a way to collapse them into a single line. Also - interestingly, the whole reason i started this venture was to get the safely remove hardware icon back. Even though I went to properties - and selected customize, and always show safely remove hardware icon, the icon is still not showing. And the clock is now displaying on three lines as well. Thanks. Lynn.

In Event Viewer I found Event Service Exit Failed in Service Control Manager twice (version 5.2 and version 5.0) whatever that means. The explanation says "The specified service stopped unexpectedly with the error indicated in the message. The service closed safely." The message reads, "The %1 service terminated with the following error: %2" Troubleshooting instructions say to use command prompt and type "sc query (service name)" I did this using the name given above (event service exit failed). Nada. No response to this. Also the following message was given: Currently there are no Microsoft Knowledge Base articles available for this specific error or event message. . . . . . So, I guess I'll just live with this. I don't use the Search function very often, but this is annoying.

what version of windows do you have on that pc? is it xp or vista or windows 7? knowing which will help me give the right directions. You can go ahead and try this go to your Control Panel, and open up ''Sounds and audio devices'', under the ''Volume'' tab, check the box next to where it says ''Place volume icon in the taskbar'',click ''Apply/OK'' and your volume icon should be back in the Notification area near your clock. You can also try right clicking on the Start Button and choosing "Properties". On the Taskbar Tab, check the box that says "Hide Inactive Icons", but choose "Customize." Find the volume icon and change the display settings to "Always Show" If that does not work then you likely have a corrupt Sndvol32 file and will need to replace it. Let me know how the first instructions work.