Firstly, hi from me, this is my first post here.

In view of not getting any help or even any constructive answers on the actual official Linux Mint forums, I thought I might try here to see if there is anyone that actually gives a damn about small bugs that occasionally pop up.

Basically, I have a nice fresh clean install of Mint 10 (32 bit, Gnome) and on the whole everything is working ok except that the Mint Update notification icon that appears in the notification area on the right hand side of the panel has stopped loading at startup. Now the actual Mint Update program is working 100% fine when manually loaded from the mint menu, it's just that the little shield shaped icon that should be appearing is very useful to see if your system is up to date without having to bother launching the program to find out (when up to date it shows the green tick symbol). It was loading fine for the first couple of days but then suddenly stopped.

If anyone has any ideas or knows if this is an official minor bug, I would be very grateful to hear from you. I know its not the end of the world but I like things to be working 100% if possible and don't want to bother doing a remastersys backup until everything is so.

Any replies much appreciated.

ps, I have tried re-installing Mint update and have made sure that I have NOT deleted the notification area by mistake.

There should be a menu called Startup Applications Preference .
In this menu you can select which applications are running at start up is the MintUpdate select as on ?

Yes, it's definitely on, sorry, perhaps I should have mentioned that above as well (that was something I checked first).

Yes but you have it in youŕe main menu .
If you goes there with youŕe mouse pointer and click on youŕe mouse button (right one) you get some options .
Some of them is add to panel , launch when I login etc .
Did you try this options

Yes I did try, when you 'add to panel' it simply adds a shortcut along with the other quick launch icons on the left hand side of the panel.

When you apply 'launch on start up' it launches the whole app and asks for password as though you started an actual update manually.

Both options tried, if you tried them you would realise this, but thanks anyway.

I may be wrong but I thought the 'shield' only appeared when you had updates to install?

edit:
My mistake.

No, it should show all the time (assuming you have it set to), when there are no updates the shield shows a green tick symbol.