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  • From Windows to wireless, Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector finds solutions to readers' most vexing PC problems.
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Lincoln Spector

Slim Down Your System Tray

I have approximately 20 programs running in the system tray on the right end of my taskbar. How do I prevent some of them from loading every time Windows starts up?

Mike Hedrick, via the Internet

These days every program seems to put its icon in your system tray. The icons do more than just fill up the taskbar, though. Each icon in the system tray represents a running program that's using RAM and other system resources.

To identify the program associated with an icon, hold the mouse pointer over it until a title pops up. Now ask yourself if you need that program running at all times. If it's something like a firewall or an antivirus program's auto-protect module that does something constructive while it's in the background, the answer is yes. But if it's something like the little AOL icon that merely gives you yet another way to launch the service, you can probably do without it.

Right-click the icon and examine the menu that pops up. There's often an Exit or Close option. When you select this, you may be asked whether you want the program to restart the next time you restart Windows; tell it you don't. (You can turn off AOL's system tray program in this way.) If that doesn't work, examine the pop-up menu for an option named 'Preferences' or 'Options'. Or open the program itself and check its menus for an option that will prevent it from loading on start-up.

If the program doesn't include a simple way to turn itself off, you have to do the job through Windows. In Windows 98, Me, or XP, select Start, Run, type msconfig, press Enter, and click the StartUp tab. Msconfig doesn't come with Windows 95 or 2000, but Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel freeware will do the trick if you use one of those OSs. For more information on de-iconizing the system tray, see Steve Bass's article, " Uninvited Icons Cause More Than Clutter."

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