Win XP: Custom Notifications

Launch Regedit from the Start menu's Run dialog. Navigate to HKEY_ CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\TrayNotify. In the right-hand pane, locate the Binary values named IconStreams and PastIconStreams and delete them. That's not sufficient, though, because Windows Explorer still has the current list in memory.
Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Task Manager. Click on the Processes tab, highlight the entry for Explorer, and click on the End Process button. Still in the Task Manager, select New Task from the File menu, type Explorer, and click on OK.