So, this is my fault. Somehow, putzing around with my maintenance apps (CCleaner, Advanced System Care) I apparently deleted the Avast entry from my startup folder (checked in system config - no entry for Avast), so I don’t see the Avast sys tray icon upon a system start until I manually open Avast. Is there a way to fix this short of an uninstall/reinstall of Avast?
Try msconfig>start up 