Have you noticed that your taskbar clock has a lot more company lately? That area is called the System Tray, and programs can tell Windows to load an icon there to give you status information and let you right- or left-click to perform operations. This is a handy thing, but it can be done to excess, and too many programs are loading at start-up and slowing down your system.

Sometimes the program provides a friendly way to clean up the System Tray. Right-click on the program's tray icon to see whenter you have the option of turning it off. If all you want to do is clean the icons out of your System Tray (while still having the programs load), check out PC Magazine's TrayManager.

If you're running Windows 95:

Go to the WindowsStart MenuPrograms Startup folder in Windows Explorer. You can add or remove programs here for start-up.

If you're running Windows 98:

Go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information. Then select Tools > System Configuration from the Menu. From that dialog box, click on the Startup tab. Now you can deselect those programs you want to load at start-up.

If your program wasn't in the StartUp folder, check the Registry. Go to Start > Run and type

regedit

Go to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersion section. Look for the Run key, which contains a number of strings--programs Windows loads. You can delete keys at your discretion.

ValleyNet

58 North Main Street, PO Box 486, White River Junction, VT 05001 Voice 802 359-4162  |  Fax 802 359-4164