Tip #4697 - Clearing Out Unwanted Network Icons
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Q:
It seems like I have a lot of unused network icons sitting down in
my system tray. Is there any way I can get rid of some of those? I'd
really like to clean that area up. Thanks for your help!
A:
Oooh, good question! I definitely
know what you're talking about when you ask this question, because
I have the same problem. Every time I look down in my system tray
to see what time it is, my eyes are bombarded by a whole slew of unnecessary
icons. Most of them are related to my network, but they just sit there
for no good reason. And to be honest, I don't even know what half
of them are for! So, if your system tray is filling up with unwanted
network icons and you'd like to clear some of them out, follow along
with this tip to find out how you can do just that!
First of all,
I want to make sure everyone knows what kind of icons we're talking
about. Your network icons can be anything from your network card to
your wireless connection to your local area connection and so on.
If you don't use some of those things anymore, it only makes sense
to get rid of them, right? So, let's get started!
Once you decide
which icons you'd like to remove, just right click on one and choose
Status. That will bring up the Status window for
that particular network icon. Next, click on the Properties
button. From there, look toward the bottom of the window and uncheck
the boxes that say "Show icon in notification area when
connected" and "Notify me when this connection
has limited or no connectivity." Those two settings
mainly deal with your network connections, but once you have them
all set up, your icons will disappear!
Now, there is
another alternative, but it's a little more involved, so do it at
your own risk. It really helps in certain cases though. For example,
if you use this method for your wireless card, it can actually lengthen
the life of your battery. To get started, right click on the icon
you want to remove and choose Status. From there,
click on the Disable button. By doing that, you're
actually disabling your network connection, which will also turn off
the hardware that goes with it. In the case of your wireless card,
it will shut that down, which will dramatically lower your power usage.
If you ever need
to enable a network connection again, you can do so by going to Start,
Control Panel, Network Connections.
There you will see a list of all your connections, whether they're
disabled or not. To reconnect one, just right click it and hit Enable.
Also, if you ever want to bring one of your icons back, just simply
do the very first set of instructions in reverse. If you just simply
checkmark the two options listed above, your icons will come back
to life! That's it. It sure is nice to clean up your computer from
time to time, isn't it?!
~ Erin
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