I have a couple of pieces of hardware that activate this icon. The removable media drive in my Epson Photo 925 printer, and my Apple (Win) iPod (when plugged in). However, occasionally, this icon disappears and even by plugging in the iPod won't bring it back.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Thanx!

Is Explorer.exe crashing/restarting? Are other system tray icons disappearing?

Interesting question - yes. I've had explorer.exe tank once or twice. Is this related?

I think you might want to look into motherboard driver updates as well. I have never seen that problem with my ipod. I don't usually have it plugged in very long though. I usually disconnect it though XPlay because it seems faster.

It could be, sometimes when explorer crashes, some of the system tray icons can disappear, although the process is still running.

Adam -

Any ideas what would cause explorer to tank?

To be completely honest, not really. After a crash, take a look at your event logs, it may shed some light as to why explorer crashed.

Other than that, standard recommendations apply, such as Windows Update, WHQL-Certified drivers for (most) all hardware, limiting 3rd party applications that have API calls to explorer, etc.