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

• 0.0.9.2b - Second beta release - fixed Win2k compatibility, now displays # visible, hidden
• 0.0.9b - Initial beta release

Other resources

On this site

• Sidebar: Preinstalled software is evil
• Stop dumping your damn icons in my system tray!

Elsewhere

• Microsoft KB Article Q310578 - Windows System Tray Icons
• Sysinternals AutoRuns - use this to selectively disable non-standard programs hooked in to the shell tray

Notes

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