The Windows System tray has been with us for years. And while it's great to have quick access to some of your running programs through a tiny icon, once you've got a dozen or so of those icons running, the system tray can seriously eat into your Windows Taskbar space. Fortunately, Windows XP and Vista can dynamically resize the system tray to hide icons you're not currently using. But if you'd rather get rid of system tray altogether, here are the steps to do it (courtesy of the How-To Geek):

1. Open the run programs dialog box (either by hitting Win+R or finding the Run icon in the Windows Start Menu)
2. Type "regedit" to open the Windows Registry Editor
3. Find this section: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
4. Create a new DWORD Value by right-clicking and selecting new DWORD or clicking Edit, then New, then DWORD
5. Name your DWORD Value NoTrayItemsDisplay
6. Set the value to 1

That's it. Next time you log out of Windows or reboot your system tray should be gone. All of your programs will continue to run, but you won't see any icons at the bottom right of your screen.

You can restore your system tray either by changing the value to 0 or by deleting the entry. On some systems, the entry may show up in more than one place so if at first you don't succeed, make sure to search your registry for "NoTrayItemsDisplay" to make sure you've deleted every instance.

The Windows blue screen of death is an enigmatic thing; unavoidable and menacing, it knows no master, rising unbidden to threaten young and old alike. The blue screen is one of those universal frustrations; like traffic, or multiple waiting rooms at the doctor's office, or finding food between your teeth minutes after an important meeting or rendezvous.

It would be something approximating madness to suggest a way to voluntarily kill your Windows machine with the fabled blue screen of death. It would be sheer madness to suggest why you might want to do so.

Well, we're here to do both.

Thanks to a bit of keyboard foolery, you can create your own Windows BSOD in 3 simple keystrokes. It turns out this function was built into Windows for testing purposes, so it's not a bug, and it won't have any side effects (beside that Pavlovian grimace on your face as the blue screen appears). If there's any doubt about that, check out the Microsoft KB article on the subject (because we all know the MS KB articles are the end of the debate).

To enable this "feature," open up regedit (if you don't know what that is, read no further!) and browse down to one of the below keys, which will differ according to keyboard type:

USB:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters

PS/2 Keyboard:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters

Right-click on the right-hand pane of the Registry Editor and add a new DWORD key named CrashOnCtrlScroll, giving it a value of 1.

Reboot your computer; now you are ready to bring forth the blue screen of death by using the following keyboard shortcut:

Hold down Right Ctrl and hit Scroll Lock twice

And the beast will rise. If you wish to remove this behavior, simply delete the registry key and restart your computer.

As to why you would want the ability to trigger said blue screen? I'll let you be creative in the comments, but I can think of a few: it can get you out of work (how can you expect to get anything done with a freak recurring blue screen of death?), scare a friend by triggering it on their own computer...the possibilities are well nigh endless.

Ah, productivity...

[Via the How-To Geek]

Are you sick of those Windows balloons telling you that you have unused icons on your desktop or that your LAN is connected? I don't doubt that about 1 in 100 people finds the notifications useful, but for the other 99 of us, here's a way to pop the balloons once and for all.

Follow these steps (note: this has been tested only on Windows XP):

• Go to Start > Run; type regedit and press Enter.
• In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced
• Create a new DWORD value by going to Edit > New > DWORD Value. Name it EnableBalloonTips and give it value 0.
• Exit the Registry Editor.
• Log off Windows and login again to see your changes take effect.

To re-activate balloon notifications, change the value of EnableBalloonTips to 1.

[Via Techie Corner]