I would like to reduce the number of items which appear in the Windows system tray (next to the clock) so that the computer will start and shutdown quicker. Am I correct that the relevant startup items need to be removed from the System Configuration Utility > “Startup” tab? If this assumption is correct can you clarify why the “Startup” tab has 16 items enabled but the system tray displays less than half these icons?

The “Startup” tab in the System Configuration Utility (“Start” menu > “Run” and type > “msconfig” without the quotes then click OK) is the most complete list of programs and processes which load on Windows startup. However, not all of the items which load on Windows startup are visible with a user interface – quite a few are hidden background processes which perform operations in the background without any user interaction or user interface. Likewise, some of the items which appear in the system tray are Windows system icons, rather than items which are loading on Windows startup.

As an example, one of the items which appears in your Startup tab listing (which Robert sent through with his question, but has not been included in the column due to space constraints) is
“avgtray”. This is the tray icon for AVG Antivirus, which you presumably have installed on the computer. As such, you should see an icon within the system tray for AVG Antivirus, and the “avgtray” process is the startup item which causes that icon to appear in the system tray. Another item listed on the Startup tab of the System Configuration Utility is “AdobeARM”. This is an automatic update utility for Adobe Reader (the PDF viewing utility) installed on your computer. This process silently checks for updates in the background and then notifies you should an update be available. It is not particularly useful for this process to have a user interface, as it just checks for updates to another program. Therefore, this process does not appear as an icon in the system tray but instead just runs silently in the background conducting its business. Eventually when an update is available it may present a window allowing you the opportunity to download the update, but for the majority of the time it will just be in the background.

Additionally, some of the icons in the system tray are not processes listed on the “Startup” tab in the System Configuration Utility. For example, the speaker icon in the system tray represents the Volume Control which is a Windows system utility allowing you to control the volume on the computer. You may also see an icon with two computers representing the network connection, allowing you to see when there is network activity over the connection. These icons can be disabled from their respective settings (i.e. the Sounds and Audio Devices and Network Connection control panels) but if your main objective is to speed-up the Windows startup time there is not much point, since those icons loading do not add a particularly large resource burden onto the computer.

As you can see, there is not a one-to-one mapping between Startup items listed in the System Configuration Utility and the icons in the system tray. If you do wish to speed-up the Windows startup time then your best option is to look through each individual item on the “Startup” tab of the System Configuration Utility and determine which are not necessary (if any) and untick those from loading on startup. Be aware, you will need to thoroughly research each item to make sure that they are not actually needed, as you don’t want to disable something which is important and needed (as that could result in undesirable effects on the computer).

In any event, it is a good idea to go through the “Add or Remove Programs” control panel and check whether there are any programs installed on your computer which you don’t need. Uninstalling old programs which are no longer used is a good general housekeeping procedure and can also result in the computer running faster, particularly if uninstalling such unused programs results in startup items associated with those programs also being uninstalled.