Bought a new laptop pre installed with VHP, all worked fine until today when i switched it on the battery icon and the sound icon were missing from the taskbar.  Took the usual steps, restart etc, then checked the taskbar properties and the power and sound icon options were greyed out.  At this point i decided to google it, no suprise to find many other people with the same problem, the first solution someone suggested was to shut down and take the battery out, leave it for 10 mins then put it back in - tried no luck

Carried on searching most posts were saying to try the above until i found a real solution:

Regedit and delete the keys "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify...
"PastIconsStream"" and "IconStream"

It doesnt re-enable the icons but it does stop the tick boxes being greyed out so you can now click them then vuala the icons are back!  Solved my problem, just posting this incase anyone else has the same issue and has not yet found the cure.