I am not able to adjust the sound (up or down) from the bottom taskbar. When I go into Control Panel I check "hardware and sound" and "device and printers" and USUALLY a small taskbar comes up with about 4 adjusters. I cannot get thsi smalll taskbar to ocme up how do you do it? thank you!I'm going to assume from your wording that you're using Windows 7. This should really be in the Windows 7 section not in hardware but the volume controls controls can be accessed from either:

START menu> Control Panel> Hardware and sound (click on the green text or the ICON)> Adjust system volume (under sound)

Windows run command  [Press the Windows key+R] and type in sndvol.exe

To restore the icon on your task bar open any window (not your internet browser) and paste the following into the address bar: 
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Notification Area Icons
You can navigate to this via the control panel but my computer doesn't want to show me the simplified control panel at the moment :p

You want to make sure that the Volume icon's behaviour is set to show icon and notifications.

Hope that helped.