papaG said:
Is there any way to remove items from the quick launch tab next to the
clock?
That's not the quick launch tab, it's the notification area of the taskbar.
The default location for the quick launch toolbar is immediately to the
right of the Start button.
To remove these items stop the programs generate them from running.
First step should be to check in the options for the program you don't want
to start and see if there is a setting to tell it not to run at startup.
The next step is to remove any entries you don't want from the two startup
folders:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
Programs also load from these keys in the registry. Go to start | run |
regedit | Ok, navigate to the keys and delete what you don't want to run in
the right pane.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
You can also use msonfig from Start | run | msconfig | Ok, and on the
startup tab and uncheck references to these startup programs as an
alternative to removing their entries in the registry.
Make sure you have a backup of the registry using a program like ERUNT
before making any changes to the registry.
ERUNT
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/erunt.txt
Installing and Using ERUNT
http://www.silentrunners.org/sr_eruntuse.html
http://www.winxptutor.com/regback.htm