How to turn Windows system network icon on/off programmatically - windows

Question

I want to turn the system network icon on/off in my application likes what we can do via control panel. I know the "HideSCANetwork" registry item, but to use this solution I need to restart the explorer after changing the setting. Is there any other solution which can do this seamlessly like the system?

Answer 1

There is no official API for doing thois. The reason for this is that Microsoft wanted to give the user the ability to keep their notification area from becoming too full. The problem being too many applications starting notification icons that the user doesn't care for.
Since many users don't know how to get rid of these icons, Microsoft decided to help by hiding them by default. If applications had access to these hide/show settings then applications would simply show the notifications by default and we'd be back where we started. So there is no mechanism provided for modifying these settings programmatically.
You want to do something different that sounds equally malicious, namely to hide an important system icon. If you are determined to do this then you can reverse engineer how the setting is stored (likely in the registry) and change the setting that way. However, you'll be going against the system design should you do so.

Answer 2

Now I find a imperfect solution. The basic idea comes from here:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/10807/Shell-Tray-Info-Arrange-your-system-tray-icons
Some tips:
This solution supports Win 7, you can remove XP checking code.
On wow64, you need to change the struct TRAYDATA and use TBUTTON64:
struct TRAYDATA
{
DWORD64 hwnd;
UINT uID;
UINT uCallbackMessage;
DWORD Reserved[2];
DWORD64 hIcon;
};
typedef struct _TBBUTTON64
{
int iBitmap;
int idCommand;
BYTE fsState;
BYTE fsStyle;
BYTE bReserved[6];
DWORD64 dwData;
DWORD64 iString;
} TBBUTTON64, NEAR* PTBBUTTON64, *LPTBBUTTON64;
typedef const TBBUTTON64 *LPCTBBUTTON64;
When you find the icon you want to hide(By using the tip text plus the owner process), send a TB_HIDEBUTTON message to the notification area window.
The imperfect part is that the tray icon will be hidden, but the notification area will not resize. So there is a blank area on the notification area.