Web Talk

The system tray on your Windows OS  is that place located on the bottom-right side of your taskbar (next to the Windows clock) which shows you important and useful icons which stand for programs running on your computer. Now, in Windows 7  we have something called Notification Area which basically does the same things as the old system tray. There are tons of ways to customize your Notification Area. Read these articles on how to hide icons from the system tray and how to clean out Windows 7 Notification Area. However, in this article, I have decided to go a little further. In fact, I will explain to you how to turn off and remove for good the Notification Area to gain some more space on the taskbar!

1. Click Start.
2. In the Search field, type regedit and press Enter.
3. If prompted, click YES in the UAC prompt window.
4. Locate the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer
5. In the right pane, right click any empty space of the window and from the menu click create a new 32-bit DWORD. Name it NoTrayItemsDisplay and give it value 1.  This will hide the Notification Area (0 to show it back).
6. Click OK.
7. Restart Windows 7 for the change to take effect.