I had a bit similiar problem some time ago, and stil is although now it is very rare. Taking the network connection icon from systray helped a lot of crashing LS after boot and when recycling, but didn't take it of though. I still have that volume icon in as I need it and it might be a rest of the problem... not sure though.. all I can do is to guess, and my best guess is that it might have something to do with alphablending in those icons... but perhaps someone would know better..

Sorry if there is some typos in, it's quite annoying to write foreign language when you have just woke up =P