Removing programs / icons from the taskbar

[bullwinkle]

I have XP sp3.  How can I stop some of the programs from running that have icons on the task bar?

I would like to stop some of these programs from being executed at start up.


Thank you.

[Allan]

There are any number of ways to do what you want, but the easiest is with a simple app such as Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel (http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml). Download it, run it, uncheck any items you don't want loading at boot. That's it.

[bullwinkle]

I downloaded Mike's program and ran it through the Control Panel.

However none of the programs running on my task bar are mentioned.  In fact there is only one program listed, which I run in startup.

I usually control the startup through msconfig but these task bar programs appear to be untouchable.

[Allan]

1) msconfig is a diagnostic utility and should not be used to make permanent changes to startup processes

2) A more comprehensive startup manager is Process Explorer. I generally prefer recommending Startup Control Panel because Process Explorer is as comprehensive as it is, but you can certainly download and use it: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

3) What programs are we talking about?

[patio]

There's nothing StartupCPL doesn't see...we need more info at this point as if it didn't work for you something is amiss...

[bullwinkle]

Thank you.  I hope this works. 

I have programs like skype, dropbox, etc. that I rarely use (but someday might), and I think they may be running in the background.  My system is slow enough already without that.