If you have been running Windows 7 for some time you might notice eventually that some of the notification icons that are displayed in the customize dialog are those of programs that are no longer installed on the computer system. Neither the software program nor the Windows operating system seem to remove those old notification icons from the system tray automatically.
This can be a problem because of two reasons: The customize dialog will grow over time with new notification icons added but none removed. It will take longer to customize the system tray icons. The second is privacy as the icons will reveal information about programs that have been used on the computer system in the past.
The customize window which becomes available after clicking on customize in the system tray area can only be used to hide or show notification icons but there is no way of deleting or removing old icons.
All icons are cached in the Windows Registry. The easiest way to remove the past notification icons – without software – is therefor to delete the Registry keys that contain the cache.
Here is how you can remove old notification icons from the Windows 7 system tray.
- Press [Windows R], type [regedit] and hit [enter]
- Navigate to the Registry key HKCU \Software \Classes \LocalSettings \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \TrayNotify
- Make a backup of the Registry key by right-clicking on TrayNotify and selecting Export.
- Now delete the following two Registry keys: IconStreams and PastIconsStream
- Open the Windows Task Manager with [Ctrl Shift Esc]
- Terminate the explorer.exe process
- Click on File > New Task Run and enter explorer.exe to reload the explorer process
This removes all icons that are currently not in use from the system tray. Users who prefer a software solution can try Tray Cleaner instead.
Attention: Copying articles to your website is not allowed. If you like the article you may copy the code below and post it on your website or user profile.Related Articles:
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thanks alot it is working those hiding icon were making my pc laptop slow but just removed all hidden icon
thanks alotttt …..great job it is working