How To Remove The VMWare Tray Icon For All Users
Mandi Tofolla
When you manually remove the icon what actually changes? A new value is added to the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware Tools. The value added is ShowTray which is a REG_DWORD with Data 0:
So we know how to manually add the correct entry to the Registry to remove the VMware Tools icon from the System Tray for all users. I do not want to manually perform this on all machines I build, so we can use a simple one liner at a command prompt to add the key:
Now we have a working entry at the command line this could be placed in a batch file to be run on the machine on first boot. Another way to deploy this would be as part of a Packer Provisioner when a template is built:
The 'icon' is actually a toolbar and I can temporarily disable it by right clicking the taskbar and DE-selecting it. However, upon rebooting the system, it always insists on coming back and activating itself.
If you disable "Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Service" it prevents it from coming back. Logging on via RDP always caused it to re-enable and it was annoying me to no end! Thank god its gone for good now.
VMware adds Touchscreen support to the standard hardware for the guest even if the host machine doesn't have Touchscreen support. That's why VMware VMs using Windows 8 automatically have "Pen and Touch" and "Tablet PC Settings" in the Control Panel and also why the Virtual Keyboard Toolbar keeps showing up in the taskbar.
With the "FALSE" setting, the Touchscreen device won't even try to load in the first place and the Device Manager won't even list the device. This also gets rid of "VMware Virtual HiD" from Control Panel / Devices and Printers.
Both of these will disable Touchscreen support in the Virtual Machine. It will also automatically make the virtual machine a non-touch screen computer so "Pen and Touch" and "Tablet PC Settings" will automatically be removed from the Windows 8 Control Panel.
It would have been nice if some of this was documented by VMware. But now you know why the Touch Keyboard Toolbar keeps appearing and a bunch of other things that aren't needed at all if you don't have a Touchscreen!
Disabling the service didn't seem to prevent the toolbar from coming back after sleep for me. The following seems to fix that. Note that this disables all taskbar toolbars, not just the touch input one.
Also note that I have the service disabled as mentioned in one of the other answers. I'm not sure whether this makes a difference or not, but as I mentioned earlier, just disabling the service didn't prevent the toolbar from coming back after the computer went to sleep.
Personally, I just used the nuclear option of deleting the Touch Input Panel dll file. For me, this file is located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ink\tipband.dll. Note that, first, you will have to take ownership of the file from TrustedInstaller using the Security tab in file properties. In addition, because explorer.exe loads the file when it starts up, I first had to terminate explorer.exe from the Task Manager, and then use an elevated command prompt to delete this file.
I finally got it to work but I'm not sure how. I updated Windows with all the latest updates including optional updates. But I also tried the answer above this. I used "Take Ownership" on all the main folders under c: and then rebooted and turned off the Touch Keyboard Toolbar. It didn't show up in the VM after coming back from sleep. So maybe that's what fixed it. It would be nice if someone found out specifically which folder needed full permissions because I'm not going to take full permissions of everything on a real machine.
Edit: I finally figured out the problem with VMware Workstation 9. I had the VMware USB 3.0 device installed in the Virtual Machine but I don't have USB 3 on the host. Either way, I downgraded the VM to USB 2.0 and I can now wake from sleep with no more Touch Keyboard Toolbar. I still think something is wrong with Windows because a USB 3.0 error should never trigger enabling a Toolbar. There are probably other things that set it off too.
After investigation I found it to be a permissions issue. I was logged on as administrator and it was asking for permissions from TrustedInstaller. As administrator, I took ownership of all the folders on the root of the C: drive and all sub folders and set permissions to FULL.
After I rebooted, I unchecked the box that turns on the taskbar and it went away for good. I tested it thoroughly and found that if you enable the Use Mouse and Keyboard in the Ease Of Access in control panel, it will turn it back on and you have to turn it back off by right clicking the task bar and disabling the checkbox again. Just make sure the logged on user has permission to shut it down and it will stay off.
I had this same issue with my ASUS G75VW. Since you're also on a laptop, I'm willing to wager you have some sort of drivers installed for your touch pad, just as I did. It's likely that such drivers are the same ones you've had installed since you had Windows 7.
First, try attempting to uninstall your touch pad drivers via Control Panel (the driver might be listed as "Synaptics Touch Pad Driver"). If you can't find it there, press Win+X and attempt to locate it in Device Manager, potentially in the section where you might find input devices.
Then, restart your computer. After restarting, you'll see that touch services should no longer be invoked, and your tabs in Firefox should no longer be huge (that's one of the symptoms that I had on my computer, so I'm listing it here for search engine purposes). You can now proceed to update your touch pad drivers to the version compatible with Windows 8.
My particular case is apparently different from most other users. I tried all the posted fixes to get the touch keyboard icon to vanish from my taskbar and they all failed. I finally figured it out.A while back I bought a Logitech T650 Touchpad and installed it. I used it for a few days then returned it. That's when I noticed the icon on my taskbar. I went into the setpoint software settings, clicked on unifying software settings, then advanced, then I unchecked the T650 from the list of devices. Success! The touch keyboard is still listed in the toolbar choices but doesn't appear on the taskbar,I hope my experience will help others.
This is the simplest way to prevent the thing from showing up again. It doesn't involve any drivers or uninstalling anything or re-installing anything or rebooting, getting gpedit to run on a home edition. It works on XP-8, server versions, will also disable that stupid language bar that most of us don't need. You'll need to end explorer and re-launch that to make it take effect right now, otherwise it will happen next time you happen to restart.
Just add a registry key called NoToolbarsOnTaskbar and set the value to 1. The path is \Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer and you'll want it in HKLM and HKCU.
The system tray (or "systray") is a section of the taskbars in the Microsoft Windows operating system (OS) user interface that provides easy access icons to the user's most commonly used apps and displays the clock.
To interact with a program in the system tray, select an icon with the mouse and double-click or right-click the icon. When minimizing the program after using it, it shrinks back into the system tray instead of into the main part of the taskbar.
What makes a system tray icon unique is that -- when installed -- it can have a customized message appear when the mouse is hovering over it; the menu that appears when users right-click it can be customized, and the action that occurs when they double-click it can also be customized.
For example, the double-click action for Windows Explorer could be to launch -- start or open a dialog window for -- the program. Still, the double-click action for a desktop icon could be to "View desktop," simply remove the active windows and show the underlying desktop.
An icon can be placed in the system tray when a program is installed by making an entry in the system registry or later by creating a shortcut to a program and dragging the shortcut icon to the system tray.
An icon can be removed by deleting the registry entry or right-clicking it and selecting Delete on the pop-up menu. The clock is removed by deselecting the "show clock" option in the taskbar properties.
Installing Horizon Client From the Command Line at VMware Docs has instructions on how to install the Horizon Client silently. Common methods for installing the client silently include: SCCM and Active Directory Group Policy Computer Startup Script.
VMware Fling View Auto-Connection Utility: The View Auto-Connection Utility allows you to connect the VMware View Client automatically into a View desktop or an application pool when the system starts up.
In the Horizon Client, each desktop/app icon has a star icon you can click, or right-click an icon and Mark as Favorite. Favorites are stored in the LDAP database on the Horizon Connection Server.
When you connect to a Horizon Connection Server, and if the certificate is not trusted or valid, then the user is prompted to accept the certificate. You can disable this prompt for any client machine that can be controlled using group policy.
When you install the Horizon Agent component, be sure to select the scanner redirection feature if you want to use it; it is disabled by default. If you are installing the feature onto a server-based OS (Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012 R2) for either VDI desktops or RDSH desktops or applications, then be sure that the Desktop Experience feature (a Microsoft operating system feature) is installed on the server OS first. (This is a prerequisite for installing scanners in a server-based OS.)
After a user makes a connection from a compatible Windows Horizon Client to the new Horizon Agent, a new tool-tray application icon appears. The user clicks the icon to reveal the compatible image acquisition devices available for scanning.