How to Empty the Tray? Win2000Pro

[G.Khan]

Had this new system about three weeks and notice the tray is rapidly filling up with unwanted icons. Previously with Win95/98 had no problem in going to msconfig etc. and un-ticking the boxes. All I can find in Win2K is a Start File which only contains about four programmes, no boxes.
Any ideas please?, Cheers.

[fobotcso]

G'day GK,

You can get rid of the icons in the "Quick Launch" area by right-clicking an empty part of the Taskbar, left-clicking the "Toolbars" options and removing the appropriate ticks.

Managing some icons in the System Tray might be done in the application itself (eg in Windows NT you used to be able to specify icon or no icon) but this is not common in Win 2K Apps;

Failing that, you might have to do it using a bit of Visual Basic programming. See these links to the MS Knowledge Base.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q162/6/13.asp
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q149/2/76.asp
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q177/0/95.ASP

Is it worth it, I ask myself? :eek:

Personally, I only have four icons in the Quick Launch area (next to "Start") and I never even notice them, let alone remember to use them. I also have nine in the System Tray that I use all the time to see what the PC is up to and to control some Applications.

Might this be a moment to invoke the old saying "If it ain't broke..."?

[G.Khan]

Hi FOBOTCSO - thanks. Yes it was/is the System Tray that is filling up, now fifteen icons when OFF line!
Tried the fix you mentioned but could not remove anything from the Sys. tray.
Possibly best left alone but they do take up a lot of space.
Cheers, G.K.

[fobotcso]

Wow GK, 15 seems a lot! Although the number of icons by itself isn't important, it suggests that there may well be processes running that are using resources (CPU/RAM/IRQs) that are slowing down the PC.

Of my nine icons, I can get rid of two straight away by logging off the LAN and the Dial-Up I'm using to be here. Two more are for McAfee (using resources), one for the firewall (resources) and one for dial-up sharing (resources). There are a couple more status indicators (no resources) and the volume control. And that's it.

Have a look at your Task Manager by going: Ctrl/Alt/Del and then "T" or click on Task Manager. There you can see the programs running (Applications/processes - call them what you will). 25-35 is a normal range for my PCs. The higher figure is for the Dial-Up master. It's 34 as I write. Several processes don't have icons (eg TextBridge Instant Access). Under the tab for Performance, I'm using 1-2% of CPU and 123K Memory.

Your 15 icons suggest too many processes are running in the background consuming resources. As we said above, check out the Tools/Options/Preferences etc for some of the icon related programs to see whether you need them all the time. Although you have only four in your start-up folder, many more can be started by settings in the Registry.

(edit)Oh, I couldn't find system tray in my TechNet library either but there was something under the word "icon" that led me to the MS knowledge base articles.

[ 07 November 2001: Message edited by: fobotcso ]

[G.Khan]

Yup. Thanks to all, have managed to get rid of several by going through the relevant programme and un-ticking the Sys. tray option box. Missed it during set up with so much going on around me at the same time!! Cheers. GK.