Ever since XP, the notification area has been a welcome friend. However, over the course of your use, you might want to take a look at the list of notification icons that are indexed by your system. You can do this by right-clicking on the system tray -> Properties -> Notification Area tab -> Customize. This will bring up a long list of past notification messages that are probably irrelevant with how you use your system now. It has been a pet peeve of mine ever since XP but it’s only now that I got around to cleaning mine. If you’re pissed off with such a long list of irrelevant crap in your system, then here’s how to eliminate them.

Note: Editing values in your system registry can f*ck your system up so be careful and just modify what’s shown.

• Fire up regedit by pressing the Windows Key. Key in “regedit” in the Start Search bar and press Enter.
• Look up HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify
• In the list, you would see values named IconStreams and PastIconsStream
, delete them
  
• Log out and log-in again to “refresh” the registry.