Disable System Tray icons from appearing?

E

Eric

Hi,

I have a system that I'm putting together that is going to open terminal.

There is a particular program I need running, but I don't even want it's
system tray icon to even appear.

The program, itself, doesn't have any options to disable it's system tray
icon.

Anyone know of a quick and dirty way to disable it from even appearing?

I found a way to disable the system tray entirely through the registry, but
that isn't an option. I need the tray for another reason.

Running it as a service using srvany isn't an option either. For my
intended purpose with program , it needs to be run under a user.

I found some free and shareware programs to do what I want, but they also
attempt to do 1001 other things. They are all boated as well.

Anyone know of a program that will do this -- and only this?

Thanks...
 
E

Eric

Eric said:
Hi,

I have a system that I'm putting together that is going to open terminal.

There is a particular program I need running, but I don't even want it's
system tray icon to even appear.

The program, itself, doesn't have any options to disable it's system tray
icon.

Anyone know of a quick and dirty way to disable it from even appearing?

I found a way to disable the system tray entirely through the registry,
but that isn't an option. I need the tray for another reason.

Running it as a service using srvany isn't an option either. For my
intended purpose with program , it needs to be run under a user.

I found some free and shareware programs to do what I want, but they also
attempt to do 1001 other things. They are all boated as well.

Anyone know of a program that will do this -- and only this?

Thanks...

I think I may be getting closer, by using another approach.

Running the program completetly hidden (no desktop interaction) would
achieve the goal of the system tray icon not appearing.

It can be done. Its done easily when running anything as a service. Now to
just figure out how to do it as a user run...

This would be even better I could make interaction (icon) active for some
users, while completetly hidden for users.

This isn't for anything malicious, btw.
 
A

AJR

Eric - A little confused here - if the "icon" appears in the system tray
(taskbar?) it should be listed under the "Start" tab in MSCONFIG - if so,
uncheck.
 
M

Mario Schmidt

You may activate "hide inactive symbols" in taskbar properties and then
click on "customize" to manage your systray icons.
 
E

Eric

Mario Schmidt said:
You may activate "hide inactive symbols" in taskbar properties and then
click on "customize" to manage your systray icons.

Hi,

I tried an approach involving that. Permanently "always hide" the icon,
find a way to disable the "show more icons" arrow, and disable user logins
from being able to get to taskbar properties.

Unfortunetly, the "show more icons" arrow can't be "disabled". (By
"disabled", I mean that it would greyed-out.) It is a use or don't use
feature. There is no way to use it, but "disable" it, through the registry.

Even if there was a way, I don't have much confidence with WinXP and the
whole "show/hide" icons thing, anyway. Its often squirrely.

Another approach I tried since originally posting was using the privileges
angle. This doesn't work because this program needs to run under the user
logged in. Same problem with this approach as running it as a service using
srvany.

You would think there would be a way to clear cut way to set something like
this up.

I.e., logged in as administrator, you should be able to set permissions for
x programs so that y user(s) can run it -- but can't interact with it.
(If interaction was disabled, I could live with the icon in the tray.)

This is going to be an open terminal with an open user account (no
password). The program needs to run under the user account -- but, I don't
want it possible for there to be interaction with it. (I've already
disabled the task manager all together.)
 
E

Eric

Eric said:
Hi,

I tried an approach involving that. Permanently "always hide" the icon,
find a way to disable the "show more icons" arrow, and disable user logins
from being able to get to taskbar properties.

Unfortunetly, the "show more icons" arrow can't be "disabled". (By
"disabled", I mean that it would greyed-out.) It is a use or don't use
feature. There is no way to use it, but "disable" it, through the
registry.

Even if there was a way, I don't have much confidence with WinXP and the
whole "show/hide" icons thing, anyway. Its often squirrely.

Another approach I tried since originally posting was using the privileges
angle. This doesn't work because this program needs to run under the user
logged in. Same problem with this approach as running it as a service
using srvany.

You would think there would be a way to clear cut way to set something
like this up.

I.e., logged in as administrator, you should be able to set permissions
for x programs so that y user(s) can run it -- but can't interact with it.
(If interaction was disabled, I could live with the icon in the tray.)

This is going to be an open terminal with an open user account (no
password). The program needs to run under the user account -- but, I
don't want it possible for there to be interaction with it. (I've already
disabled the task manager all together.)

Alright, I think I'm track to a solution now.

Last ditch attempt was to look to see if there are any general flags that
could be passed at runtime to prevent any program from displaying it's hard
coded system tray icon. Came up empty.

Looked for a precurser program, or even a "container", to run it in. Came
up empty.

Running as a service wouldn't work. I need it to run under the logged in
user. Permission tweaking wouldn't work for same reason.

Found resources on how to lock down WinXP for kiosk setups. (Not just
IExplorer, but entire desktop.) I'm also looking at alternate WinXP shells
all together..
 
M

Mario Schmidt

Eric said:
Hi,

I tried an approach involving that.

There is really no chance to get your hands on the source code, modify
and recompile it? I did that with realvnc to disable the possibility for
the user to close down the application.

If there is no chance you may have to look for another program.
Closed-Source sucks. I know this is a Microsoft group. Oh, well...
 
E

Eric

Mario Schmidt said:
There is really no chance to get your hands on the source code, modify and
recompile it? I did that with realvnc to disable the possibility for the
user to close down the application.

If there is no chance you may have to look for another program.
Closed-Source sucks. I know this is a Microsoft group. Oh, well...

Hi,

Unfortunetly, the source isn't available. More unfortunate is that the
specific programs that need to be open and available have only been
developed for Windows. They also have been tailored to very specific tasks.
Had it not been this, the project would've been screaming to be done under
GNU/Linux or FreeBSD -- but, I'm locked into Windows. :/

I've mentally played with some ideas of still using *NIX, but running the
needed programs under emulation. Also playing around with some
network-based ideas such as just using a thin-client terminal approach.

Its going to be running on a private LAN with no (direct or indirect) public
internet connection.

Thanks!
 

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