Recipe 5.9. Hiding All Icons in the Notification Area


Problem

You want to hide all icons in the Notification Area, not just individual ones, so that you will only see the time and date in the Notification Area; no other icons will appear there.

Solution

Using the Registry

  1. Open the Registry Editor and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer.

  2. Create a new DWORD called NoTrayItemsDisplay.

  3. Assign it a value of 1. (A value of 0 will keep the icons displayed.)

  4. Exit the Registry and reboot. The Notification Area should appear as in Figure 5-9.

  5. To display the icons, either delete the NoTrayItemsDisplay key or else change its value to and reboot or log off and on again.

Figure 5-9. The Notification Area with no icons displayed


Discussion

One potential problem with hiding all icons from displaying in the Notification Area is that you won't be able to know at a glance which programs are running. This can cause problems because when you install some software, it always launches on startup, even if you don't want it to. If you hide all icons in the Notification Area, you won't know what software is automatically launching. So if you do hide all icons, remember to display them every once in a while, so you can know what's running on your system.

See Also

Recipe 5.8 for information on how to hide only specific the icons in the Notification Area



Windows XP Cookbook
Windows XP Cookbook (Cookbooks)
ISBN: 0596007256
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 408

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