If you haven't got avast installed then this registry Key and 'Group' Value shouldn't exist.
OK David, the value indeed does not exist, I referred to the "fenomenon" of loss of icons alone with or wihout Avast! installed
. And I came to think (and say
) that Avast should not be "suspected" to cause the issue.
in your case it has to be something else.
So I'll follow the clues, named startup services dependencies and keys and values related to icons in sys tray.