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 nice to see people find our work to be useful.
Anonymous
14 years ago
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.
Anonymous
13 years ago
Well, I ran it … but explorer never came back! I need to restart the computer. *sigh*
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 http://www.digitalcitizen.life
:: WARNING! This utility restarts your shell (Explorer.exe) and deletes your notification area icons
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?
ROBERT CLARK RUTKOWSKI
12 years ago
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.
Vince Johnson
11 years ago
Thanks, I’ve been trying to get rid of a certain notification icon for a while and this finally did it.
Thank you SO much!
Steve
11 years ago
I had an issue with my notification area where the icons I usually show in the taskbar were missing (not just shown without an image, I mean totally missing) and the icons in the notification area were almost all blank. I only had two or three icons that were still actually visible and they were scattered (not all lined up in a row – there were blanks between them…read on). For the rest, there were still other “slots” filled, but not the correct number of slots and no icon appeared in them – they were just “blank” icon slots. Then, every 15 seconds to 2 minutes I would have another blank icon or two appear in my notification area. If left alone, the notification area would swell to take up about half of the entire screen when expanded to view the icons inside. There was no tooltip when you hover the mouse over the blank icons, and moving your mouse across the blank icons would cause many of them to disappear when your mouse moved away from that blank icon. So by moving your mouse around in circles over the expanded notification area you could basically clear out all but a few of the blank icons…but the process never stopped. Even after wiping out most of the blank icons you would still rack up more of them over time – and at the same pace as before. None of them were click-able (with the left or right mouse buttons) but they all showed the shadow “hover” background when your mouse was over them. Truly strange. It always happened right from start-up so I removed what few programs I could from my start-up list (which I always keep very lean in the first place), I disabled a few non-essential services, and rebooted to see if it helped. Nothing changed.
My problem wasn’t like most of the taskbar/notification area icon problems I had found in search engine results while trying to find an answer to this. I read plenty of pages about people who had icons that were blank, but their icons were still functional (they had a tooltip, they were still responsive to left and right clicking, etc.)…and they had no infinitely recurring periodic creation of additional blank icons that would disappear when the mouse was moved across them. So none of those solutions seemed to be right for me. The symptoms my system were showing did not fit the mold. Google’s auto-suggestions in their search field lead me to believe that I am far from alone in this problem, but none of their search results actually described my situation.
Well, out of options, I tried this batch file solution anyway and BANG – I have my taskbar icons back where they should have been, my missing notification icons have returned, all icons are functional, and I have NO blank icons appearing.
This appears to have fixed the issue completely. I mention this here in case anyone else has the same symptoms my machine had. I want them to realize that this is still apparently a result of a corrupt icon db, though for me it showed very different signs than the classic symptoms most people experience with that type of error. Hopefully this narrative will become a beacon in Google’s search results to help people with this specific issue – because nothing else seems to be so far…
ixmybu
11 years ago
I had a problem with my wireless connection icon – it changed from showing the connection strength to showing a red x even though the internet connection was fully functional. Restarting the computer and enabling/disabling the adapter did nothing but this .bat program restored the icon to its original form straight away. Thanks!
I do have the same problem with my wireless connection icon – it changed from showing the connection strength to showing a red x even though the internet connection is fully functional. Have tried a lot of things, cleaning manually those register entries also. Still can not figure out what triggered on problem. And this .bat file wan’nt works for me neither. Any solutions or ideas, please.
Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit
That has to do with a malfunction in the windows tray area of “explorer.exe”. This can be easily fixed with a little registry tweaking. I must put a disclaimer on this method:.
Modifying REGISTRY settings incorrectly can cause serious problems that may prevent your computer from booting properly. I cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the configuring of REGISTRY settings can be solved. Modifications of these settings are at your own risk. As long as you follow ALL and ONLY these steps, you will be fine. Here’s what you need to do:
1. Click Start -> Run then type regedit in the box that appears and click ok.
2. In regedit, navigate to the following registry key:
3. Delete the ‘Icon Streams’ and ‘Past Icons Stream’ values.
Now you’ll need to recycle Explorer.exe by opening up task manager (You can use Ctrl+Shift+Esc), selecting explorer.exe in the list of processes and choosing End Process.
Now go to the File menu, choose New Task and type in explorer.exe into the open box. Hit enter, and explorer should restart itself. Depending on how many programs you run/install, you may have to repeat the process regularly.
Awesome, worked like a charm! (Although once I clicked End Process, my desktop went blank… Had to re-open/restart Task Manager again and just clicked New Task button.) Thanks for easy fix with no install!
Ken Arntsen
11 years ago
I ran the bat file but it stopped with a message that Windows could not find explorer.exepar
Is there some way to get round this. (Win 7 (64))
Ken McKinney
10 years ago
Excellent article and batch file. Fixed my problem with leftover icons in the Notification Area after the programs had been uninstalled. Microsoft was of no help what-so-ever. Thank you so much for the expert help that Microsoft is failing to provide.
Mike Royal
10 years ago
Worked like a dream for me on a Win 8 computer.
Only wish I had found this tip hours ago.
Many Thanks.
Vasanth
10 years ago
my only word “superb”.Thanks..a lot
tiuperman
10 years ago
good job dude…………….
Dev
10 years ago
AntiVirus rang
Brett Smith
10 years ago
Thanks this got me out of bother thanks again
Mike
10 years ago
stopped by here searching for something else, and found this little gem that solved a long-standing problem- THANKS!
Wesley Hall
10 years ago
Spent hours trying to solve and then found this beauty! I’m a little angry now because it worked so fast and so well after I’d been trying for hours. Thanks a million times!!
I’m happy were able to help you. Don’t hesitate to pay us a visit from time to time. I’m sure you will find other useful content on our website.
Lil
10 years ago
Thanks ! This do just what i wanted it do.
Gayle
10 years ago
Brilliant! … After hours of trying a million other things. Thank you.
Murai
10 years ago
Thanks! It’s a great idea to kill the explorer before deleting registry values.
Computerdude
10 years ago
Interesting. I opened the batch file with Notepad to see what it was going to do, and found two commands to delete two keys in the registry. I found them and deleted them manually, then rebooted, but nothing seemed to have happened. Then I ran the batch file normally and it worked! Strange though…
Thanks, this’ll never get old for me!
JeffS66
10 years ago
WOW!…..worked great!!…wish I had come here first instead of wasting about 2 hours last night looking for a solution. Well done!!
I’m glad we helped. Don’t hesitate to subscribe to our site and check our articles from time to time. You might find other useful stuff.
Peter
10 years ago
I do have the same problem with my wireless connection icon – it changed from showing the connection strength to showing a red x even though the internet connection is fully functional. Have tried a lot of things, cleaning manually those register entries also. Still can not figure out what triggered on problem. And this .bat file wan’nt works for me neither. Any solutions or ideas, please.
Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Matthias
10 years ago
Brilliant !
Mini
9 years ago
It worked perfectly on windows 7 pro..
Will it work on win 8.1 also ..???
For those who thought its may be infected , below is the result ;
Wow! That was so fast and easy I barely new it happened. Thank you
skyrail
9 years ago
For many years, I could not understand why some of my app did not appear in the system tray, and an icon did not match with the app name.
The best solution, working most of the time, was to kill a task, then relaunch it.
Then you brought this clean solution on a platter.
That is a post of great value.
Thank you.
BB
9 years ago
Other suggested solutions I found seemed unduly complicated to a non-techie like me. Then I found this – short, simple, quick, worked for me on Win 8.1. Neat job. Many thanks.
Shreyas
9 years ago
Thank You It Works
Steve from England
9 years ago
What a great little tool. Worked perfectly on my HP laptop with windows 7. Thank you very much. Software that works as well as this, are few and far between. There is so much rubbish software around these days. Is there any chance of any more? Have a nice day.
LAO
9 years ago
Just excellent tool!, literally “click and go”!
Thanks!
Happy
9 years ago
An awesome utility tool… Thanks a lot…
Cheers to you man.. (y)
JK
9 years ago
Brilliant, worked on the exceedingly paranoid windows 8.1 , thanks really appreciated
Lar Gram
9 years ago
I was fearful but trusted. It worked brilliantly. Thank you!
I feel like this is one function that should have been baked into Windows 7 and 8 anyway.
Excellent piece of tool !!! One of the very -very-very few times I followed instructions without any annoying ads and it was so effective too !!!
THANK YOU VERY_VERY MUCH!!!
I’m glad our article has helped you. Don’t hesitate to subscribe to one of our newsletters and receive our content on a regular basis. You will surely find other useful articles.
Great cleaner for the notification tray. Easy and fast.
Stu
9 years ago
Fantastic, thank you!!!
shane
9 years ago
I would like to know if it is safe to run this over and over again (daily). I have a process that runs every two hours and it fills the tray with dozens of dead icons. This trick refreshes it and removes them. I’m worried that it could somehow hurt the PC?
Antony
9 years ago
Absolutely spot on :!! it cleaned the junk out that the pc shop left on after the so kindly installed crappy avg and other muck, i uninstalled these only to be left with much muck in the tray notifier area. op system win 7 premium, 64 bit
John
9 years ago
Thanks!
Nishant
9 years ago
Some TuneUp thing got downloaded.. And i can’t remove it from the notification bar.. tried this nut didn’t work.. what to do now?
Simi A.
9 years ago
WOW, Ive struggled with fixing the notifications in m toolbar, some icons wouldn’t show I even made restore to earlier time and that didn’t work either. Now I found this miraculous cleaner!! I saw the command just for a second and the running normal icons are on task bar but no arrow but at least I see the network icon and others, strange how they disappeared and I couldn’t restore to default. Thanks so much for this download!!!
Zise
9 years ago
It worked on my Windows 8.1. A nice and simple tutorial. Thanks
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 nice to see people find our work to be useful.
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 explorer never came back! I need to restart the computer. *sigh*
You can always restart explorer with [Windows Key]+[R], type “explorer”, [Return/Enter]
Thanks a lot for the small .bat program. Worked like charm.
Thank you! Worked great. This was worth something. Would have paid for it.
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. 😀
An ABSOLUTE gem! Thanks for sharing.
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 http://www.digitalcitizen.life
:: WARNING! This utility restarts your shell (Explorer.exe) and deletes your notification area icons
taskkill /im explorer.exe /f
reg delete “HKCUSoftwareClassesLocal SettingsSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionTrayNotify” /v IconStreams /f
reg delete “HKCUSoftwareClassesLocal SettingsSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionTrayNotify” /v PastIconsStream /f
start “Shell Restarter” /d “%systemroot%” /i /normal explorer.exe
Any suggestions greatly appreciated
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 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 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.
Thanks, I’ve been trying to get rid of a certain notification icon for a while and this finally did it.
Thank you SO much!
I had an issue with my notification area where the icons I usually show in the taskbar were missing (not just shown without an image, I mean totally missing) and the icons in the notification area were almost all blank. I only had two or three icons that were still actually visible and they were scattered (not all lined up in a row – there were blanks between them…read on). For the rest, there were still other “slots” filled, but not the correct number of slots and no icon appeared in them – they were just “blank” icon slots. Then, every 15 seconds to 2 minutes I would have another blank icon or two appear in my notification area. If left alone, the notification area would swell to take up about half of the entire screen when expanded to view the icons inside. There was no tooltip when you hover the mouse over the blank icons, and moving your mouse across the blank icons would cause many of them to disappear when your mouse moved away from that blank icon. So by moving your mouse around in circles over the expanded notification area you could basically clear out all but a few of the blank icons…but the process never stopped. Even after wiping out most of the blank icons you would still rack up more of them over time – and at the same pace as before. None of them were click-able (with the left or right mouse buttons) but they all showed the shadow “hover” background when your mouse was over them. Truly strange. It always happened right from start-up so I removed what few programs I could from my start-up list (which I always keep very lean in the first place), I disabled a few non-essential services, and rebooted to see if it helped. Nothing changed.
My problem wasn’t like most of the taskbar/notification area icon problems I had found in search engine results while trying to find an answer to this. I read plenty of pages about people who had icons that were blank, but their icons were still functional (they had a tooltip, they were still responsive to left and right clicking, etc.)…and they had no infinitely recurring periodic creation of additional blank icons that would disappear when the mouse was moved across them. So none of those solutions seemed to be right for me. The symptoms my system were showing did not fit the mold. Google’s auto-suggestions in their search field lead me to believe that I am far from alone in this problem, but none of their search results actually described my situation.
Well, out of options, I tried this batch file solution anyway and BANG – I have my taskbar icons back where they should have been, my missing notification icons have returned, all icons are functional, and I have NO blank icons appearing.
This appears to have fixed the issue completely. I mention this here in case anyone else has the same symptoms my machine had. I want them to realize that this is still apparently a result of a corrupt icon db, though for me it showed very different signs than the classic symptoms most people experience with that type of error. Hopefully this narrative will become a beacon in Google’s search results to help people with this specific issue – because nothing else seems to be so far…
I had a problem with my wireless connection icon – it changed from showing the connection strength to showing a red x even though the internet connection was fully functional. Restarting the computer and enabling/disabling the adapter did nothing but this .bat program restored the icon to its original form straight away. Thanks!
I do have the same problem with my wireless connection icon – it changed from showing the connection strength to showing a red x even though the internet connection is fully functional. Have tried a lot of things, cleaning manually those register entries also. Still can not figure out what triggered on problem. And this .bat file wan’nt works for me neither. Any solutions or ideas, please.
Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit
That has to do with a malfunction in the windows tray area of “explorer.exe”. This can be easily fixed with a little registry tweaking. I must put a disclaimer on this method:.
Modifying REGISTRY settings incorrectly can cause serious problems that may prevent your computer from booting properly. I cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the configuring of REGISTRY settings can be solved. Modifications of these settings are at your own risk. As long as you follow ALL and ONLY these steps, you will be fine. Here’s what you need to do:
1. Click Start -> Run then type regedit in the box that appears and click ok.
2. In regedit, navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareClassesLocal SettingsSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionTrayNotify
3. Delete the ‘Icon Streams’ and ‘Past Icons Stream’ values.
Now you’ll need to recycle Explorer.exe by opening up task manager (You can use Ctrl+Shift+Esc), selecting explorer.exe in the list of processes and choosing End Process.
Now go to the File menu, choose New Task and type in explorer.exe into the open box. Hit enter, and explorer should restart itself. Depending on how many programs you run/install, you may have to repeat the process regularly.
Hope this helps!
thanx. It is accurate information.
Awesome, worked like a charm! (Although once I clicked End Process, my desktop went blank… Had to re-open/restart Task Manager again and just clicked New Task button.) Thanks for easy fix with no install!
I ran the bat file but it stopped with a message that Windows could not find explorer.exepar
Is there some way to get round this. (Win 7 (64))
Excellent article and batch file. Fixed my problem with leftover icons in the Notification Area after the programs had been uninstalled. Microsoft was of no help what-so-ever. Thank you so much for the expert help that Microsoft is failing to provide.
Worked like a dream for me on a Win 8 computer.
Only wish I had found this tip hours ago.
Many Thanks.
my only word “superb”.Thanks..a lot
good job dude…………….
AntiVirus rang
Thanks this got me out of bother thanks again
stopped by here searching for something else, and found this little gem that solved a long-standing problem- THANKS!
Spent hours trying to solve and then found this beauty! I’m a little angry now because it worked so fast and so well after I’d been trying for hours. Thanks a million times!!
I’m happy were able to help you. Don’t hesitate to pay us a visit from time to time. I’m sure you will find other useful content on our website.
Thanks ! This do just what i wanted it do.
Brilliant! … After hours of trying a million other things. Thank you.
Thanks! It’s a great idea to kill the explorer before deleting registry values.
Interesting. I opened the batch file with Notepad to see what it was going to do, and found two commands to delete two keys in the registry. I found them and deleted them manually, then rebooted, but nothing seemed to have happened. Then I ran the batch file normally and it worked! Strange though…
Thanks, this’ll never get old for me!
WOW!…..worked great!!…wish I had come here first instead of wasting about 2 hours last night looking for a solution. Well done!!
I’m glad we helped. Don’t hesitate to subscribe to our site and check our articles from time to time. You might find other useful stuff.
I do have the same problem with my wireless connection icon – it changed from showing the connection strength to showing a red x even though the internet connection is fully functional. Have tried a lot of things, cleaning manually those register entries also. Still can not figure out what triggered on problem. And this .bat file wan’nt works for me neither. Any solutions or ideas, please.
Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Brilliant !
It worked perfectly on windows 7 pro..
Will it work on win 8.1 also ..???
For those who thought its may be infected , below is the result ;
URL:
Detection ratio: 0 / 52
https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/91e14341e71a220ba19b573195b3794cc93d64a43d76142ef3ddb6efe6d9810c/analysis/1398160953/
Wow! That was so fast and easy I barely new it happened. Thank you
For many years, I could not understand why some of my app did not appear in the system tray, and an icon did not match with the app name.
The best solution, working most of the time, was to kill a task, then relaunch it.
Then you brought this clean solution on a platter.
That is a post of great value.
Thank you.
Other suggested solutions I found seemed unduly complicated to a non-techie like me. Then I found this – short, simple, quick, worked for me on Win 8.1. Neat job. Many thanks.
Thank You It Works
What a great little tool. Worked perfectly on my HP laptop with windows 7. Thank you very much. Software that works as well as this, are few and far between. There is so much rubbish software around these days. Is there any chance of any more? Have a nice day.
Just excellent tool!, literally “click and go”!
Thanks!
An awesome utility tool… Thanks a lot…
Cheers to you man.. (y)
Brilliant, worked on the exceedingly paranoid windows 8.1 , thanks really appreciated
I was fearful but trusted. It worked brilliantly. Thank you!
I feel like this is one function that should have been baked into Windows 7 and 8 anyway.
Forgot to mention: Windows 7.
Works like a charm
Thank you
Excellent piece of tool !!! One of the very -very-very few times I followed instructions without any annoying ads and it was so effective too !!!
THANK YOU VERY_VERY MUCH!!!
I’m glad our article has helped you. Don’t hesitate to subscribe to one of our newsletters and receive our content on a regular basis. You will surely find other useful articles.
Thank you! Very usefull!
Wow,
Nice program. My pc must be fast (ssd) as I barely saw the screen flick. Thanks for the program.
It’s runtime takes less than a second. 🙂
Great cleaner for the notification tray. Easy and fast.
Fantastic, thank you!!!
I would like to know if it is safe to run this over and over again (daily). I have a process that runs every two hours and it fills the tray with dozens of dead icons. This trick refreshes it and removes them. I’m worried that it could somehow hurt the PC?
Absolutely spot on :!! it cleaned the junk out that the pc shop left on after the so kindly installed crappy avg and other muck, i uninstalled these only to be left with much muck in the tray notifier area. op system win 7 premium, 64 bit
Thanks!
Some TuneUp thing got downloaded.. And i can’t remove it from the notification bar.. tried this nut didn’t work.. what to do now?
WOW, Ive struggled with fixing the notifications in m toolbar, some icons wouldn’t show I even made restore to earlier time and that didn’t work either. Now I found this miraculous cleaner!! I saw the command just for a second and the running normal icons are on task bar but no arrow but at least I see the network icon and others, strange how they disappeared and I couldn’t restore to default. Thanks so much for this download!!!
It worked on my Windows 8.1. A nice and simple tutorial. Thanks