Hello. I am running Windows XP Home, and I want to hide some of the system tray icons. I go to start,run, msconfig, and then click on startup tab. I then Uncheck the program that i dont want being shown in the tray. I then restart my computer like it asks. When the computer boots up again, a window pops up telling me that i am in diagnostic startup, and the icon is in the system tray still. What i am asking is How do i hide the system tray icons, but have the program still running. please help, and i already know about the right click system tray, properties, customize, i want the icon gone, but the program still running. I want to know how to make MSCONFIG work.

It does not work that way. If it's running it's in the tray. Removing a program from start-up will in fact sop the program and not just remove it's icon. To my knowledge there is no Windows O/S that ever allowed background programs to run with no tray icon. Jimi_l

I think what you're looking for is click on the start menu. Right click on a blank area and click on properties. Click on the taskbar tab and click on customize. There you can select which icons you want to hide. This will hide the icons and keep the program running. Msconfig is only if you want to stop the program from running for diagnostic purposes. There are free startup managers if you want to control whether the programs runs on startup or not. Hope this helps.

Try right clicking on the tray icons & look in options to see if you can hide it & still have it running in the background, very few programs offer that option.

Right Johnw, Many of the programs have within them the option to hide tray icons, and actually that is the best way to do it. Personally I keep almost nothing in startup except antivirus and firewall, and that is really all you need to optimize performance.