Comment 7 for bug 207761

I see this too, i.e., logout, login, then trash can is very likely invisible. The applet is running (e.g., ps says it's running), in fact right-clicking at a thin region where you expect it, its right-click menu still shows up. So it's as though it has a very thin width.

I upgraded from 7.10, and then applied all updates for hardy as of April 8 01:20am EDT.

Observable in LiveCD too.

I find a high correlation to user's bonobo-activation-server not dying after logout. Manually kill it after gnome logout (e.g., go to text console to login and look for it and kill it), and next gnome login the trash can is visible again.