How to gain more taskbar space by hiding the notification area (Windows 7)

The notification area on the Windows 7 taskbar (formerly known as the system tray) contains icons that can provide you with useful information. But some people never really use it, and would like to hide it in order to gain more useful space on the taskbar. Well, you can do that by editing the registry. As always, back it up first and be careful. Here are the steps:

1. Open the registry editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer
2. In the right pane, right click an empty space and select New | DWORD value
3. Name the new value NoTrayItemsDisplay
4. Double click it and type in the value data as 1.
5. Right click on the taskbar and click Task Manager.
6. On the Processes tab, kill the Explorer.exe process.
7. On the Applications tab, click the New Task button.
8. Type explorer.exe and click the OK button.

The notification area should now be hidden. If you want to unhide it, repeat the steps and in step 4, assign a value of 0.