I'm setting up a Windows 7 machine that will sit out in the open and be shared by a lot of people. I have added a shortcut to the all users start menu to run a program that sits in the system tray. I want the tray icon for this program to always be visible by default, no matter who logs in. A user can turn it off on their profile if they really want to, but I need it to at least start out set as always visible. How can I do this?
I would rather not show all the icons, in part for the same reason they are hidden in the first place: I don't want the clutter. Also, as this is a public computer there is another program called DeepFreeze running that also has a system tray icon, and I don't want that icon to show all the time.
Best Answer
In a nut-shell, currently, you can't do this.
There is no Group Policy or Preference to set this, and the way it keeps track makes it specific to the current user and the system, making the 'settings' vary greatly from instance to instance.
They are stored here (in the registry) if you want to check it out:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify
.From here:
About your easiest bet is to show ALL Notification Area icons for all users. This can be done by adding a (simple) registry entry:
In
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
create a new DWORD value namedEnableAutoTray
and set it to0
to turn off the Notification Area's 'auto hide' features.With some OU configuration and scripting you can use it in a HKCU context as well, if you only want it to happen for certain users/groups.
See here for more info on that.