a cluttered system tray...

Doublespresso

Over moderate to high use, my PC's system tray became cluttered with icons which I suspect take up resources unecessarily...

From the MSN (which I do not use but cannot remove!) to Quicktime, to RealPlayer, etc etc... Even when I exit some of them they surely coem back on teh next reboot.

I am aware that I have to be more careful when I install new programmes, but some software houses do not even warn you of what the default settings are.

My question is, whether there easy way to find which icons are necessary to keep teh PC going, and which are optional, and having done that, how to remove the wasteful ones quickly and effectively?

Any other help/suggestiosn would be gratefully appreaciated.

Debt_Free_Chick

In XP, if you right click on a blank area of the System Tray then click Customise Notifications. You can click on each item listed and then select "Always Hide" from the drop-down menu, so that the icons never appear, even if the service is running & active.

HTH

nbt

most of these things will start wehen your PC does. Check the "start up" folder in your start menu, and remove things from there, or try right-clivking the icons and looking for an "options" menu with a rtick box for startup.

You can safely remove things like quicktime and MSN messenger (these both have "start me when the system starts" tick boxes, I think - I've disabled both), but remember to leave things like your firewall and anti-virus!

elvis_bloggs

Click on start menu then click on "Run", enter msconfig then click OK .... a window will appear .... click on the startup tab and uncheck boxes of the items you don't wish to see in your system tray then click APPLY then click OK then restart computer. The items you have unticked won't start up automatically but a shortcut can be found in All Programs to start them manually.

T4i

Think the reference to the msconfig tab should be startup.

Uncheck all of them. Unisntall Real player and install real player alternative. Same goes for quicktime payer.

Both can be found here..

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm

Hiding the icons will just make you forget about all the poo running in the background and you will wonder why ypur p.c gets slower and slower.

elvis_bloggs

T4i wrote:

Think the reference to the msconfig tab should be startup.

Uncheck all of them. Unisntall Real player and install real player alternative. Same goes for quicktime payer.

Both can be found here..

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm

Hiding the icons will just make you forget about all the poo running in the background and you will wonder why ypur p.c gets slower and slower.

Yep, so right, my mistook....well it was early in the morning.

Doublespresso

Thanks for teh tips. BTW quicktime etc don't even show up in my start up folder!

the thing is that I don't always know which processes are needed to run my PC/laptop and which are just consuming valuable rsources... How can I find out?

Also when you open the task manager, there ar eso many activities running... how can I know which are ok to disable or uninstall?

DVB_3

I have read an interesting article about the unnecessary processes in XP some time ago. Authors went to extreme and actually conlcuded (and provided proof) that a single process (RPC) is sufficient to boot the XP up; however, the amount of errors reported would make the system unusable.

For something more realistic - take a look here and here