No longer see on screen audio "bars"

Greetings, 

I have a new Inspiron 15 (5548, Early 2015) laptop. It came with windows 7 pro. 

I made the mistake of "upgrading" to windows 8.1,hated it, and reinstalled windows 7. Now, I no longer get the onscreen graphical sound bars when adjusting the volume. The F keys work fine, I can adjust the audio level, but no on screen bars.  I've been through three chat sessions and I still can't get this resolved.

Anyone else have this issue?   

Thanks