the same thing happenned to me the darn dots dissapeared and I didn't want to reinstall so i just learned to live without them lol, recently I changed my small screen resolution to a larger one and the dots magically appeared once again, only thing i could think is that they were stuck way outside the viewing area, not sure why the preference restore didn't fix them but i'm just glad they are back lol anywyas try changing your resolution to a much larger from what you are using now and maybe you have the same luck.