Hi,
Just discovered this recently on a mate's PC and then his friend and a few others.
On most Windows programs there's a top menu with File. Edit, View etc.
His was missing from Windows Live Mail, Windows Media Player and a few other programs, which he discovered when trying to do File-Save. He couldn't !
It turns out that Microsoft in its wisdom has set this menu to be hidden by default in Windows 7. A bit randomly as well !
Solution to get it back is to right click somewhere in the top shaded areas of the menu and then select 'Classic settings', 'Show menu bar' or use the Menus icon top right and select 'Show menu bar'.
I'll try to get some screenshots to go on here.
Don't know if its common, or whether it depends on the way Windows 7 has been installed by the retailer.