How to Permanently Disable the System Tray on Windows 7 / Vista / XP

Windows System Tray is a very useful application for most us, rarely do we find it intrusive. But some do find it really irritating and useless. Here’s how a simple registry hack can remove your system tray. I can’t really imagine doing the same to my system.

Open Regedit by using Start Menu search or just Run Box and now navigate to the key below.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Now if you don’t find the key already all you got to do is create one. Right click on your right pane and create a new 32-bit DWORD value and put the values below:

* Name: NoTrayItemsDisplay
* Value: 1

After creating this key, close Regedit and logoff for this hack to take affect. 

"Note that this is hack only hides the system tray, your startup programs will still load. You’ll still need to disable your applications manually.If you run into any problems after this hack simple delete this key from registry and your system should be back to normal."

- Ronak Pandya