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Windows System Tray Scan Utility

What programs are running your system tray?

This command-line utility for Windows XP or Server 2003 will tell you which programs have inserted themselves into your "system tray"*.

It generates a list of PIDs, the program's location, and the number of visible and hidden icons for each program that has inserted itself into your system tray.

Why should you care? Well, sometimes, it's useful to know what applications are stuffing themselves into the ever-growing list of icons in the system tray, just so you can know what to uninstall or disable...

Example Output

SysTrayScan version 0.0.9.2 (BETA)
Exodus Development http://exodusdev.com
Please report any problems to exodusdev@gmail.com

    PID  Path                                               Visible Hidden
-------  ------------------------------------------------    ----- ------
   4472  C:\Program Files\Outlook Express\msimn.exe              0      1
   2032  C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE                                 1     18
   8160  C:\WINDOWS\system32\taskmgr.exe                         1     12
   1156  C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP\SynTPEnh.exe           0      1


Notes

  • Version 0.9.2b is a beta test version. Please report any problems via email: exodusdev@gmail.com.
  • This has been tested and verified on Windows XP & Windows 2000 SP4. Your mileage may vary on other Windows versions.
  • You must be logged in as a system administrator, or as a user having "debug programs" privileges.
  • This is a command-line utility; if you aren't familiar with command shells (cmd.exe, etc.) or using command-line utilities, this won't be much help to you, and you might want to familiarize yourself with using cmd.exe

Revision History

Other resources

On this site

Elsewhere

Notes

* Microsoft reminds us that this is properly called the "Taskbar Notification Area". See the footnotes in this article.

AttachmentSize
SysTrayScanCmd_092b.zip55.35 KB

Does not run on Windows-2000

It cannot run because GetProcessImageFileNameA is not found in PSAPI.DLL

Investigating...

I'll look into this and release a new version as soon as possible.

Version 0.0.9.2b should fix it

See this posting for background info. Or just download the latest version.

Is it possible, to also

Is it possible, to also print the window handle of the program

tooltip text?

Can you add the ability to extract the tooltip text from the system tray icons? I've seen a graphical tool that does this but I need something that works from the commandline. Thanks!

Good idea.. I'll see if I can add this feature soon

Thanks for the reminder!

Will this work for Vista?

Will this work for Vista?

How about XP 64-bit too?

How about XP 64-bit too?

replacing the tray

This has nothing to do with your program, but everything to do with your expertise...
Can you tell be how to display the icons in a windows replacement shell?