XP and Unused Icons in System Tray

For the first time today, I got a baloon message regarding "unused icon in my system tray ". At first I thought the message was the reminder to activate my XP... just before the baloon disappeared, I caught the part about "click baloon" to use "desktop" clean up. Having missed this opportunity until the next day boot up, is there a way to MANUALLY run this "desktop cleanup" and get rid of the icon I don't use or want?

 

Right click on the desktop, point your cursor at arrange desktop icons and then choose run desktop cleanup wizard.

 

Hello AceH,

Not clear from your post if you mean desktop icons or the "notification area" (tray entries).

If the tray entries, the following is from a MS document (Q283084)




To clear the Past Items list, perform the following steps:

Delete the IconStreams and PastIconsStream values from the following registry key:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\TrayNotify
Open Task Manager, click the Processes tab, click Explorer.exe , and then click End Process .


In Task Manager, click File , click New Task , type explorer , and then click OK .


Regards - Charles

 

Charles,
I did mean the "notification" area by the clock. I'm going to wait until tomorrow's boot up to see exactly what that baloon sign said. Thanks again.

 

Hi AceH,

FYI: Right click on an unused portion of the tray area > left click on Properties, then in the Task Bar tab, bottom panel > customize.

Here two lists: Current items
Past items - this list is what the MS Doc is referring to.

Regards - Charles

 

I tried the procedure you gave TWICE and the icon still appears. Even looked up the same instructions at the Microsoft Knowledge Base, did procedure and icon still returns.

As I mentioned, the icon still returns, flashing in the notification area. When the mouse cursor is placed over the icon it still indicates "1 warning (s) ". I've not gotten another warning yet. The first one being Tues June 24. How often are these warnings supposed to appear?

 

Hello AceH,

I'm not on XP at the moment.

I'm going to go thru the excerise of deleting "past items" myself and see what happens. Haven't done it in a long time. I'll report back.

Regards - Charles

 

Thanks Charlesvar, I really appreciate your effort in this matter.

 

Hi Ace,

Do you still get the warning?

I went through the excercise, got a warning about tray icons not being shown. Did not get a "cleanup" warning.

I don't have desktop icons, I put stuff I use often into the quick launch toolbar and the rest that I use less often is pinned to the start menu.

The desktop cleanup mechanism may be tied to the tray cleanup one.

The bottom line here is that this is one of the conditions that XP doesn't handle very well.

If the tray notifications don't go away there is a way to eliminate them, but be warned, this turns off all balloon tips:

This is from Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 307729

To Disable The Notification Area Balloon Tips;

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.

Navigate to the following subkey:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre
ntVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips.

Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0.

Quit Registry Editor. Log off Windows, and then log back on.

These steps disable all Notification Area balloon tips for this user.

There is no way to disable balloon tips for specific programs only.


Another way to handle the balloon tip issue is using XPAnti-Spy http://www.softnews.ro/public/cat/10/17/10-17-4.shtml

Look very carefully at what it does! All of what it does do is reversable however, only the deletion of MS chat client, Windows Messenger is not.

Regards - Charles

 

Charles,

What I ended up doing was to search the registry for the unwanted icon, then deleted that string. That seems to have solved the problem.....no warning, no icon showing up and a normal boot up.

Thanks again for your research with this issue.

Ace