We were asked to provide a simple solution to the problem of removing obsolete notification area icons (i.e. icons for programs that are no longer installed) which appear in the list icons for which you can change the notification area behavior. Apart from dedicated software solutions, a simple trick is to remove two registry values and then restart the explorer.exe process. Doing this will basically reset all your notification area icons and keep only your active ones. Since editing the registry is a task for advanced users, we decided to provide a simple tool to assist our readers.
First, download Notification_Area_Cleaner.bat from the bottom of this article.

To remove the notification area icon cache and restart explorer.exe, double click the downloaded file. You will see a warning because you are trying to run an 'untrusted' file. In the security warning dialog click Run. If you don't want this dialog to appear the next time you run the file, uncheck 'Always ask before opening this file'.

For a short time, while explorer.exe is restarted and the notification area icon cache is cleared, the taskbar and desktop icons will disappear and you will only see a command prompt window like this:

After restarting explorer.exe, the active programs which had notification area icons will not display them until these programs are restarted (a known example is Yahoo! Messenger). Also, due to this batch file's behavior, some antivirus products may prevent it from running. We assure you it only does what we described here. There is no virus in the file we created.
As you can see, using this file is very simple. If you have other requests or suggestions for quick fixes to common problems, tell us about them. We will be happy to hear from you and might just be able to help.
How to Customize the Notification Area
How to Work with the Action Center
New Features & Improvements in the Windows 7 Taskbar
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| 585 bytes |
Comments
Great Been looking around for
Great
Been looking around for something like this, tried Tray Cleaner but it didn't work then saw a link to this article at tinyhacker.com which worked like a charm, thanks guys this helped a lot.
Thanks for the comment. It is
Thanks for the comment. It is nice to see people find our work to be useful.
Great! I used the same from
Great! I used the same from here: http://www.itsamples.com/notification-area-cleaner.html
really useful. Thanks a lot
really useful. Thanks a lot
Worked like a charm - Hard to
Worked like a charm - Hard to find utility programs like this for Win7 - works on both 32 and 64 bit. Had to run it from the desktop, hopefully Microsoft will include it in a future update.
Well, I ran it ... but
Well, I ran it ... but explorer never came back! I need to restart the computer. *sigh*
Thanks a lot for the small
Thanks a lot for the small .bat program. Worked like charm.
Thank you! Worked great.
Thank you! Worked great. This was worth something. Would have paid for it.
I don't know why I ended up
I don't know why I ended up with loads of MSI****.tmp files in the notification area preferences...bloody Windows. You helped save my day and sanity!
We're glad we could help. :D
We're glad we could help. :D
An ABSOLUTE gem! Thanks for
An ABSOLUTE gem! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you...worked perfectly!
It's not downloading.....
The link to this program is not downloading.....
Using Vista Home Edition 32 bit and Google Chrome - is it my system or the link?
On a completely different note a made a bit of a mess of my system - couldn't uninstall program and I think I made things worse troubleshooting Windows Installer - any suggestions for a great Windows troubleshooting site would be appreciated - I'm stunned that I can't seem to find a solution to that problem.....
And I came here because I have a task bar icon for a program that I uninstalled
I receive this screen message when I click on the above link......
@echo off
:: Notification Area Cleaner
:: (c) 2009 Hally Master hally_master (at) yahoo (dot) com
:: Provided by www.7tutorials.com
:: WARNING! This utility restarts your shell (Explorer.exe) and deletes your notification area icons
taskkill /im explorer.exe /f
reg delete "HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify" /v IconStreams /f
reg delete "HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify" /v PastIconsStream /f
start "Shell Restarter" /d "%systemroot%" /i /normal explorer.exe
Any suggestions greatly appreciated
Disregard my previous post -
Disregard my previous post - the file downloaded on my desktop...
but the program didn't work - probably because I have Vista and the program is for Windows 7, right?
Any suggestions for removing the icon in the task bar for a program that's been uninstalled?
Thanks!
Yes... the file we shared is
Yes... the file we shared is for Windows 7 only. To remove a shortcut from the taskbar in Windows Vista, can't you right click on it and select delete?
I downloaded the app and it
I downloaded the app and it was a txt file so I simply edited it to a bat file in Notepad and when I ran it and then checked the Notification Tray, it was clean as a whistle. It quickly began rebuiiding whatever icons it needed. Great tool.
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