Clear Past Notification Icons In Windows 7

By Nakodari | Published: October 30, 2009

A few days back I covered a tool called Tray Cleaner that allowed users to remove all past notification area icons, but sadly there was some trouble using it in Windows 7. It did not remove the icons completely. So today I am going to share with you another method that has been tested to work.

This method will require us to edit the registry. Go to Start, type Regedit and hit Enter. This will take you to Registry Editor, now navigate to the following key from the left sidebar:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify

From the main window, delete both IconStreams and PasteIconsStream.

pasteiconsstream

Now hit Ctrl +Alt + Tab to open Task Manager and kill explorer.exe process. Once done, go to File > Run, enter explorer.exe and hit Enter, this will start explorer.exe again.

start explorer task manager

Now right-click the clock in the system tray and hit Customize notification icons. You will see that all past icons have now been removed.

notification area icons

For those who don’t know what are past notifications? Go here to learn about it. Enjoy!

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  • Colle-e
    It Works!, Thanks!.
    Finally those tiny bothersome icons are gone!
  • win7
    after killing explorer.exe process (windows7 x64)
    the start menu disappeared...so i couldnt use the run--explorer.exe

    workaround:- using windows task manager -- application tab -- click new task and type explorer.exe and click OK...
  • Ricardo
    It does the job.

    Unfortunately it deletes all icons, so we must have to customize their behaviors again.

    It solved my problem, so, thank you so much!
  • ashok1233444
    works tnx
  • Fernando Dois
    Excellent hint!!
    Works great on Windows 7!
    Finally i could get ride of the unused icons that have been removed from my system!

    Thanks and great job!!
  • Rapth
    I did it, it works great. But now I can not turn on the Action Center notifications. It just remains off, grayed out. Did I end up deleting it or something?
  • Swede
    Just ran the steps on Win 7 Professional 64-bit to remove an icon that remained after the program was uninstalled. Worked perfectly....thanks!!!
  • Paul
    Great many thanks... Worked a treat in Windows 7 Home Premium
  • Bruno Ram
    I did it in Windows Vista.
    It works!
    Thank you!!!
  • It works just great :)
    Thanks for the tip!
  • Cosmo Boy
    Windows7 change this address value in registry not like in WindowsXP Thank you very much ^_^
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