Solved System tray icon entries, can they be cleaned/removed?

Hello there,

I was recently installing and checking out Window 8.1. Everything is going just fine and with stuff like Start8 and Modernmix i personally feel i can maintain my old and preferred workflow (so, for the rest i can enjoy any new features that are now available!).

Anyway, as i was installing some of my software (and migrating settings from Windows 7 for some of them)... i came to some game launcher i use for Arma 2 called PlaywithSIX.
I had to install it a few times and the update mechanism was a bit fishy imo. For example; i could not even select where i wanted to install the applications (no extra options nothing), it just went straight into my Program Files folder.

After my install debacle i decided to make sure the system tray icon would always be shown and configure it when i stumbled upon the following:


Appearantly the app made several system tray icon entries, for having been started from several locations.

Is there any way to clean these entries in regedit somewhere or something? I hate having double entries in there for no reason....

Hello Ness, and welcome to Eight Forums.

Yes, you could use the method in the tutorial below to reset the notification area icons cache to remove any old invalid entries.

Notification Area Icons - Reset - Windows 7 Help Forums

Hope this helps,
Shawn

That totally did the trick! Thanks a lot!

You're most welcome Ness.

I too wanted to remove redundant tray icons and found the the link posted in the sevenfourms but I didn't run it because it didn't seem relevant. I'm not sure why Nesspj found it successful because in Win 8.1 the reg entries for the trayNotify are different. The keys are now:-
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify\LastAdvertisement
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify\PromotedIconCache

Not "iconstream" & "postIconsStream" so I don't see how the bat file succeeded!

Anyway, I just ran CCleaner as admin and ticked the "tray notification" box. Then used Task Manager to restart Windows Explorer.
That worked, like a charm.

I'm wondering if it would have worked just as well if I had only restarted Windows Explorer.

Cheers

I always test changes consecutively, so the above .bat did really do the trick for me on Win 8.1.
Maybe you are on, about some different keys?

Hello Jeff, and welcome to Eight Forums.

Nope. The tutorial to reset the Notification Area Icons is still the same in Windows 8 and 8.1 for only the "IconStreams & "PastIconsStream DWORD values.

Tested and 100% verified.

Hi Guys, thanks for the comments.
Maybe I should have used a different phrase - my bad.
My Win8.1 box only had the
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify\LastAdvertisement
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify\PromotedIconCache

entries, in the traynotify which is why I was basically querying why the bat file worked.

I have today looked at my Win 7 laptop, my Win 8.0 box and my Win 8.1 box and now they are all the same e.g. all have the "iconstream" & "pasticonsstream". I'm guessing that my Win 8.1 box had a head ache and that using task manager to restart explorer sorted it out??

Anyhow, thanks for the bat file Shawn, nice job.

Just got to sort Vipre out now

Anytime Jeff. I hope you get Vipre sorted.