battery meter disappeared

are you using the dell power management software?
Try uninstalling that garbage.
Then reboot, then reapply the battery icon

Check in the properties of the takbar that you have not hidden inactive icons and its hiding in there

Hi al4629740:

Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Power Options > Advanced > "Always show icon on taskbar"

To add to KCTS:

Right click on taskbar > Properties > if hide inactive taskbar icons is ticked, then scroll down to icon in question and make sure status is "Always show."

Sorry guys, none of that worked.  By the way, its the battery meter that shows up when the laptop is not hooked up to the wall.  I have the same problem also with the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon not showing up also.  What's happening to my icons?

Have you tried my suggestion yet?

I'm testing it out now, and so far so good.  Let me try it over the next few days!

I have seen many answers and never seen this one.  It is the only one that worked.  Thanks!!  By they way, what are pre-fetched settings?  Are they the same thing as startup in msconfig??

l only have a passing knowledge of how it all works, but here is a link to some good info:

http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2006/09/why-windows-takes-so-long-to-start-up.html

Good point. Same problem. I suppose there is no harm in clearing out the pre-fetch cache in case something in there has become corrupted.  Just means that Windoes XP runs a but slower for a while until the Prefetch cache data is re-built by the operating system.

Cured on my netbook.  I simple erased every file under `C:\windows\prefetch`.  All I'll do now is open and close a few programs I regularly use as well as reboot the computer a few times to speed up to process and everything will be sorted.  Also thanks to phungus69 for the hint.  I guess if a computer has experienced a instability or three then maybe it is a good idea to manually clear out the pre-fetch cache.  I just erased the contents of the folder `Prefetch` and not the folder itself.  I suppose if it was easirt to identify which one file in the prefetch cache was corrupt then only that could be erased, but it's easier and safer to wipe the lot.