SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE ICON IS MISSING

Hello,


I have an HP HDX 16 - am running Vista/Windows 8. All of a sudden, my 'Safely Remove Hardware' is not present in my taskbar. As well, today I plugged in my digital camera and USB cord into the USB and nothing happened!

I have no idea what is going on?

I have tried to restore my 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon from the instructions at this website but have had no luck.

As well, I'd sure like to know 'why' my computer is not recognizing my digital camera when I plug it in to the USB port? My computer did a windows update last night....... could this be the problem? I'm considering doing a recovery to my system but thought I'd ask first before I take more serious steps.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.