Clean Up Your System Tray
Resourse A Day0

Have you noticed that your taskbar clock has a lot more company lately? That area is called the System Tray, and programs can tell Windows to load an icon there to give you status information and let you right- or left-click to perform operations. This is a handy thing, but it can be done to excess, and too many programs are loading at start-up and slowing down your system.

Sometimes the program provides a friendly way to clean up the System Tray. Right-click on the program's tray icon to see whether you have the option of turning it off. If all you want to do is clean the icons out of your System Tray (while still having the programs load), check out this issue's PC Magazine Utility, TrayManager.

If you're running Windows 95:
Go to the Windows\Start Menu\Programs\ Startup folder in Windows Explorer. You can add or remove programs here for start-up.

If you're running Windows 98:
Go to Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools | System Information. Then select Tools | System Configuration from the Menu. From that dialog box, click on the Start-up tab. Now you can deselect those programs you want to load at start-up.

If your program wasn't in the StartUp folder, check the Registry. Go to Start | Run and type regedit. Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion section. Look for the Run key, which contains a number of strings--programs Windows loads. You can delete keys at your discretion.Restart Windows Without Restarting Your Computer

When you need to restart Windows, here's how to cut short the sometimes lengthy reboot process. Launch Notepad and type the following line:

@EXIT

Save the file as C:\Windows\Desktop \Restart.bat. An icon for the file will show up on your desktop. Right-click on the icon; choose Properties, then the Program tab. Make sure the "Close on Exit" option is enabled. Click the Advanced button, and make sure that the MS-DOS mode option is selected and that the "Warn before entering MS-DOS mode"option is deselected. Click OK to close both dialog boxes. A second icon (Restart.pif) will be created. Double-click on this icon whenever you need to restart Windows.