How to Disable and Turn Off Useless Icons and Utilities from the Taskbar

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If you are one of those guys who like to have a minimalist taskbar in your Windows 7, here is a couple of tricks for you. In fact, you can disable and turn off the clock, the Notification area (previously known as System Tray), the Battery Meter etc. from your operating system taskbar, without having to rummage among trickey settings!

1. Click Start.
2. In the Search field, type gpedit.msc and hit Enter.
3. On the left pane, locate User configuration and go to Administrative Templates – Start Menu and Taskbar.
4. On the right pane, double click Hide the Notification Area, click Disabled and click OK. This will hide the Notification area.
5. Again, in the right pane, locate the following settings:
   • Remove the battery Meter.
   • Remove clock from the system notification area.
   • Remove the Network icon.
   • Do not Search programs.
   • etc.
6. On the right pane, double click each setting and click Disabled. and right after that, OK.
7. Of course, you can choose as many settings as you wish in order to have a clean and minimalist taskbar! Just feel free to experiment. if something goes wrong or you miss some features, simple doble click the setting you disable and click Enabled. That’s it!