Kill the QuickTime Icon

THE ANNOYANCE: Every time I start my PC, a small Q-shaped QuickTime icon appears in my system tray. No matter what I do, it keeps reappearing. Can't I get rid of the godblarned thing?

THE FIX: Right-click on the icon and select QuickTime Preferences -> Browser Plugin. Clear the check box next to "QuickTime system tray icon," and then close the settings box. The icon won't appear anymore.

However, even though the icon doesn't appear any longer, QuickTime still stealthily loads a small applet every time you reboot; this allows the icon to show up, even though you've specifically said you don't want it there. So the icon may be gone, but the applet lives on. The applet is called qttask.exe, and it rates way up on the annoyance meter. You can try to stop it from loading by using the System Configuration Utility. Type msconfig at a command prompt or in the Run box, and choose the Startup tab, then uncheck the box next to qttask and click on OK. In theory, that will stop the persistent sucker from loading on startup. But when you run QuickTime again, the program stealthily undoes your change, and qttask.exe loads on startup. Some people have tried deleting the Registry key that loads qttask (the item with the value qttask.exe under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run). But you'll run into the same problem--after QuickTime runs again, it re-creates that key.

The solution? Rename or delete the file qttask.exe. QuickTime works perfectly well without it. Find it in the C:\Program Files\quicktime directory, unless you've installed QuickTime somewhere else.