Windows Defender tray icon annoyance!

So this is no big deal, although it does annoy the heck out of me. By default, the icon is only supposed to appear if WD alerts. Despite Always Show enabled in Taskbar properties and and "Always" selected in WDs options, the icon does not load during startup on Vista laptop. Loads 100% of the time on XP system. I've searched all over the place for a resolution. I even found a reg hack in reply to my year old thread on The How-To Geek forum that didn't work. Any ideas? Thank You!