are you looking at the list of running applications or the list of running processes? because i cant think of any reason other than trayserver that would make most systray icons not appear... could you list which programs wont show up in systray?

your windows key should automatically call the popup menu when you press it by itself, but ive had problems with that too... check your personal.rc to make sure these tso lines are in there:

the newest version of the installer puts them there, im not sure about earlier versions though.