Hi!
Yesterday, I installed Bitdefender (BD) for the 1st time (after I removed Microsoft Security Essentials).
Issue 1: now my system consistently sits longer at the "Welcome" screen of Windows (0.5 seconds with MSE to now 13 seconds with Bitdefender).
Issue 2: right after installing BD, a BD icon popped up in my system tray (a dark box with a large "B"). After rebooting and waiting unusually long for the system to move past the "Welcome" screen, the icon is missing. I already added the Bitdefender icon to "Show Icon and Notifications," but it is still missing. If you right-clicked it, it had "Show" and "About" as options. See image here:
Notes:
Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition - version 1.0.15.946
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Dell L702x laptop: i7-2670QM, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD
Bitdefender seems to be installed. I can open that little pop-up window (usually accessed by "Show" in the system tray icon) if I search for the program. gziface.exe is present in Task Manager. I have rebooted about 5 times, all with the slow loading and with the missing system tray icon. 
Any ideas what went wrong?