Help - Sound Icon on PC

Is there a small picture that you can click?
Or right click on the start button, click properties, then click Notification Area and have a look there.

In the notification area the boxes for volume + network have been deselected (how can this happen?) but i cannot tick them

Are you actually getting any sound out of the pc?

exactly the same tyhing happened to me the other day including being unable to reselect them but was able to after rebooting.

right click on start button/properties.
click task bar and customize. see if sound icon is there. if not you can restore default

right click on taskbar , open task manager , click on processes , click on explorer.exe , click on end process , click on yes , click on file , click on new task (run) , explorer.exe should be there , click ok , everything should return to normal

All ok now after reboot also.The only thing i can think of is the auto updates that were carried out last night when i went to shutdown.

oh and of course thanks