Are you serious? No one knew about this? Really?

xxdesmus

Now that I'm reading it, egh. Not exactly what I had in mind. And that just shows you how used to NOT! I am to the XP interface. Although I think it will work for me, just as long as I'm not running 2000.

Oh well.

Bryan Price

Looks great my system tray can get a bit cluttered with icons and that arrow always annoyed me too much to leave it enabled.

Woodsyx

I've been looking for something this for years. I just got used to not having everything I wanted installed or running just to keep the number of icons down. Very cool!

Bryan Price

"but if you get irritated by the often-flaky behavior of that little arrow"

What is it about that little arrow anyway?
Coincidentally a few minutes ago mine disappeared as it often does (and has done on every version of XP I've ever used).
What's so difficult that MS has never fixed this in an update?

Stephen A

Yeah, I agree. I can't believe this is considered "new". I've been doing the customize thing for years now. The only thing that is frustrating is there are some icons that just do not respond to the customize "always hide". I thought this was a workaround for it when I first saw it.

xious

[sarcasm] On the next episode, how to get rid of Clippy!!! [/sarcasm]

Sorry...had to do it.

greatodinsraven

Sure, this is useful, but annoying, too. If you have to restart your machine in a non-nice way (which happens on occasion), it forgets these settings and reverts to the previous ones. Gah!

martinpolley

Yeah I've been doing this for years too.

ffantasyv

Ya, I've known about this one for a long while also. But there are always people who can use these types of tips. Not everybody has the time to discover all the little nuances of an OS. As stated above, there are some icons that refuse to stay hidden (ATI's icon for instance), so the tweak works mostly, but not always.

mardigan71

@Falter

Yeah. Thats what I thought this article was going to be about. That issue you mention affects everyone. Nothing you can do about it.

iceman7

Its a useful tip for anyone that didn't know you could do it. My only problem is that sometimes when I hide network connections they simply do not get hidden! anyone else experience this before?

falter

Ok heres another Tip - Press SHUT DOWN to Shut Down your computer.

iceman7

@Stephen A: slow day, gotta keep the blog posts up.

holymogwai

@xxdesmus: No one's saying it's new, but it's not something that everyone's aware of. If you already are,then great... move onto the next post. If not, it's a good tip for Windows users.

Adam Pash, LH Senior Editor

I thought this was a workaround for the icons that don't obey the always hide rule. Anybody know of one? SystrayX has the functionality, supposedly, but it's really buggy and not freeware. Taskbar shuffle can reorder the icons, and the developer has shown interest in implementing more systray features, but nothing on that front either. Any others?

taziar

Tip #2: Click on the start menu to see a list of programs available to run on your computer!

-Ric Romero

Herkguy

I find myself doing this every half hour or so due to a nagging message about a power surge on my hub port. I've tried to fix it but the best I can do is 'always hide' it but it does not like to stay hidden, anyone else run into this?

pkchall

Yeah! What Adam said! For instance, I only came across this tweak this morning, and I've been in some pretty obscure Windows nooks and crannies over the several years I've been messing with it. Of course, I've never had a need to tweak this setting, but good to know it's there. So move along already.

jaxun

In other news:

control + c = copy
control + x = cut
control + v = paste.

enjoy :)

xxdesmus