As people customize their desktops to suit their own personal preferences, the Notification Area is often overlooked. Some users are not aware that this area of the desktop can also be customized.

For those users who are not familiar with the notification area, it is the area located in the bottom corner of your desktop, directly beside the system time.

Some programs that you install will automatically add an icon to the notification area. As you install more programs and the notification area starts to expand with more icons, customizing it becomes more appealing.

If your notification area has icons that you never use, consider removing them from the notification area. You can clean up the Notification Area in Vista by removing such icons.

To remove an icon from the Notification Area in XP:

1. Right click an empty area of the notification area and click Properties..
2. Click the Customize button.
3. Locate the program icon you want to remove from the notification area.
4. Use the drop down arrow beside the program and click Hide.
5. Click OK.

The icon for the particular program you selected in the above steps will no longer appear in the notification area. You can take this one-step further. If you never use the notification area, you may be interested in a registry hack that lets you completely disable it.

1. Click Start and click Run.
2. Type regedit.exe and click OK.
3. Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer. If you cannot find the key, you will have to create it using the File, New, Key command.
4. Create a new DWORD value in the key. From the File menu, point to new, and click DWORD value.
5. Type NoTrayItemsDisplay and press Enter.
6. Double click the new DWORD value and enter a value of 1.
7. Exit the Registry Editor.

You will need to log off your computer for the changes to take effect. If you want to enable the notification area, delete the DWORD value you created.