Sound Icon disappearing from notification area

> I have XP Pro, stand alone used at home, DSL and PC not
> shared. I have installed various programs within the
> last six months and at one point, the speaker icon in the
> notification area has disappeared.
>
> I need to use that speaker icon to raise or lower the
> volume of the sound files I need to listen to.
>
> 1. I don't have the 'hide inactive icons' settings active.
>
> 2. My default setting is to "Place Icon Volume in the
> Task Bar"
>
> 3. I have to get the icon back after each re-start by
> going to the control panel and selecting it off, then
> selecting it on again. That is the only way I can
> restore the icon and it is a royal pain in the butt.
>
> Does anyone know if there are ways I can have my Sound
> Icon appear on the boot without going through the
> settings, and without using a lot of system resources? I
> did a little research on this problem, and found a site
> that had a small program that restored the icon back to
> the notification area, but my system crawled to an
> average of 90 CPU usage, compared to about 15% before I
> installed the program. Good thing that XP provides a
> restore point. I'm an MCP in XP Pro and know that it is
> probably an IRQ problem, but I'm at a loss as to how to
> resolve it.
>
> Please help.
> Thanks
>