"Hide inactive icons" is checked. But the arrow to slide the hidden icons in/out of view moves very slowly ( >2 seconds to reveal, about the same to hide them again ). Is there any way to tweak the speed?
Windows XP. CPU usage minimal (2% or less). 19-22 icons average.
Another question would be is there a CPU hog running? Check this by opening Task Manager and checking the CPU rate. The rate of use will vary from moment to moment but generally it should run pretty low, like 5% or 25%. If it consistently runs very high, like 75% or 90% then that will slow everything down, even the movement of that arrow. If you find high CPU use you can get more details by installing Process Explorer or PerfMon. All are good, but Process Explorer also shows DPC's and hardware interrupts...
OK, since CPU use is normal and you have a lot of icons...
Seems like there should be a way of getting rid of icons rather than just hiding them. Most of mine are called "Past Items" in the Customize button of Notification Area of taskbar properties (right click taskbar>Properties). I think I just closed all those programs. Only icons of active programs appear or are hidden. Do the icons in your notification area represent programs that you are using? There are a few ways to stop them from opening if you aren't using them...
I would question the number of icons that you've got there! Do you need all of them to be running as icons? Eg some laptop trackpads have a tray icon option that can be disabled. I would imagine that the best way to limit this problem is to a) reduce the number of icons and b) make it so that the ones that you always want visible are always visible.
You said:
They are all essential. Process Explorer dumps 3 (by configuration, Network, Disk & CPU). The core temperatures take up another 4, antivirus is another, volume, VPN, Sandboxie, AutoHotkey, Safely Remove Hardware, etc.
Essential means "of the utmost importance", but I don't think you need to be able to watch most icons:
Process Explorer
High CPU can be noticed by a slow computer, high memory produces a warning by the OS and high disk can be heard by grinding (with a HDD) or shouldn't matter much (with a SSD).
As for being able to see the actual graphs, you can configure Process Explorer to not draw them but rather show up as a single flag. The graphs can then be accessed by clicking through the flag and getting into the System Information in Process Explorer.
This has an impact on opening the show/hide as it needs to draw all three graphs into an icon.
Core Temperatures
Why not just schedule a warning when your cores reach a certain temperature?
This has some impact as it needs to print 4 strings into 4 icons.
Antivirus, VPN, Sandboxie, AutoHotkey, Safely Remove Hardware, ...
Check whether these programs have a static icon, if not, configure them as such. For example, some virus scanners show their scanning activity through their icon.
You might actually want to consider that you don't need some of these running all the time, cutting down on those gets me down to only some icons and I run them on demand in a feasible way...
Drawing that has some impact too, but less than actually generating an icon.
I wonder what the other icons are for...
Options -> Tray Icons, seems in recent versions it no longer minimizes to the tray. That makes sense given that the program does not need to notify the user...
Oct 13, 2011 at 17:17
Seems to have been related to system I/O...not CPU. Higher I/O (even if CPU remains under 1-2%) causes slowdown, lower/zero I/O makes for nearly instant display. Go figure.