Kill my "Network cable unplugged" icon - killed it dead (solved)

ProPatriaMori

Cursory search in google and here hasn't turned up anything particularly helpful.

So, here's the deal. I'm running Windows XP, and Ubuntu under Virtualbox. I've gotten Virtualbox to play nicely on the internet with their little virtual network adapter. When I'm not using the VM, though, the adapter is "unplugged" and so sits on my systray looking obnoxious. I want it gone.

What I do not want to do is disable that connection, because re-enabling it every time I boot up the VM will cause great suffering to my people. Or just me. Maybe only a little suffering. Still.

"Show icon in notification area when connected" and "Notify me when this connection has little or no connectivity" are both unchecked in the connection's properties. How do I make this icon go away?

Magus`

Virtualbox is a Windows emulator, I'm.. assuming? Well, in normal Windows (XP and so on) there is an option in the control panel.. somewhere.. to turn off the thing that tells you if it's connected.

ProPatriaMori

Clarification: my host OS is XP, Ubuntu is running in Virtualbox. I do not know what option in the control panel thingy you're talking about unless it's the ones I outlined in OP.

I am editing the OP to reflect these nuances.

stigweard

Go into the network connections from the control panel, and select the virtual network connection you want to change. In the general property tab (right click the connection and choose properties), uncheck Notify me when the connection is limited or unavailable.

ProPatriaMori

stigweard wrote: »

Go into the network connections from the control panel, and select the virtual network connection you want to change. In the general property tab (right click the connection and choose properties), uncheck Notify me when the connection is limited or unavailable.

ProPatriaMori wrote: »

"Show icon in notification area when connected" and "Notify me when this connection has little or no connectivity" are both unchecked in the connection's properties.

Just sayin'.

stigweard

It shows unchecked on the one even if you open it from its taskbar icon?

Aurin

I have a second LAN connection that I never use... and so far the only way to get rid of it from the taskbar is to disable it completely in network connections. Just shutting off the notification left it hanging out in the system tray.

JHunz

You're looking for this.
The main article and comment 13 have slightly different effects, so you may want to try them both and see which you like better.

ProPatriaMori

@stigweard: Yes. I think "limited or no connectivity" is actually the state when the OS assigns you a private IP in the 169.*.*.* or whatever range after it thinks you can't get connectivity for some reason. That's a whole other thing that makes my brain hurt.

@JHunz: This looks promising. The key is labelled "Network Connections Tray," so hopefully removing it doesn't make me lose /all/ my connections...comment 13 is a neat thing too, except I've never liked their "inactive" metric for a tray icon.

EDIT: Yup, it took all the connections out of the system tray. The registry solution is non-ideal, though it's new to me. I don't know why I couldn't find that with Google.

I get the feeling that "hide inactive icons" is as good as I'm going to get, but does anybody have anything else?

stigweard

Why not setup static ips for your virtual connections then? I checked both of my vmware virtual connections, and both use static ips. If you are getting the limited connectivity error because of failed dhcp, nopt using dhcp should fix it.

Yar

Windows assumes that if a connection is both "enabled" and "unplugged" then you need a tray icon notifying you of this.

ProPatriaMori

What Yar said. I actually was about to see if a static IP would help, Stigweard, but as it happens it's already static (since it's basically a router port from the view of the VM; it's on 192.168.0.1).

I realize now that I haven't said thanks yet so I do want to thank everyone for at least responding. Both of JHunz' solutions work, but not in ways that are entirely satisfactory to me. Again, though, I suspect that they are as close as I will get unless I could trick Windows into thinking that this adapter is like the Firewire one, which it doesn't bitch about.

embrik

It's times like these that I'm glad I have access to Experts Exchange -
Stop the Network Location Awareness (NLA) service and set it to manual start.

If that doesn't take care of it, try also stopping the Network Connections service (This just stops the config editing stuff for network connections, not the connections themselves)

Alternatively, you can use the "Hide inactive icons" feature. Pull up the customize part and choose "Always Hide" for the disconnected icon.

ProPatriaMori

Stopping Network Location Awareness doesn't seem to do anything useful. I restarted explorer.exe just to make sure and the icon persists in its loathsome existence.

Network Connections I'm pretty sure I don't want to stop, since the Windows Firewall service claims to depend on it. I'll admit that I don't know much about WF's efficacy, but I don't remember it ever being indicated (even on Slashdot) that it was really a good idea not to use it.

However, now I've done a couple searches using the stuff in JHunz' message and have come across an answer that I like. For some adapters, including this one, you can configure it through the device properties (either through device manager or the configure button on the connection itself), go to the advanced tab, and set Media Status or an analogous value to "Always Connected." Since it's just a connection to a VM I think it's okay to pretend that it's always there, though I should probably put it on a different subnet than 192.168.0..

Thanks again, everybody. I think I'm going to call this solved.

Dman

Yar wrote: »

Windows assumes that if a connection is both "enabled" and "unplugged" then you need a tray icon notifying you of this.

Windows is windows, it does lots of useful stuff without much effort, and displays stuff and runs processes you don't really want/need that take a lot of effort to get rid of. I just accept this and stopped trying to fight it.

Supposedly they are working on some stripped down windows OS's for the next generation of windows that will be designed for servers, but I'm thinking they may make good no frills OS's for a home box you want to mod and game with.

embrik

ProPatriaMori wrote: »

Stopping Network Location Awareness doesn't seem to do anything useful. I restarted explorer.exe just to make sure and the icon persists in its loathsome existence.

Network Connections I'm pretty sure I don't want to stop, since the Windows Firewall service claims to depend on it. I'll admit that I don't know much about WF's efficacy, but I don't remember it ever being indicated (even on Slashdot) that it was really a good idea not to use it.

However, now I've done a couple searches using the stuff in JHunz' message and have come across an answer that I like. For some adapters, including this one, you can configure it through the device properties (either through device manager or the configure button on the connection itself), go to the advanced tab, and set Media Status or an analogous value to "Always Connected." Since it's just a connection to a VM I think it's okay to pretend that it's always there, though I should probably put it on a different subnet than 192.168.0..

Thanks again, everybody. I think I'm going to call this solved.

Nice find, I should've gone deeper into the settings before messing w/ services. I'll have to remember this one for later.

FyreWulff

Dman wrote: »

Yar wrote: »

Windows assumes that if a connection is both "enabled" and "unplugged" then you need a tray icon notifying you of this.

Windows is windows, it does lots of useful stuff without much effort, and displays stuff and runs processes you don't really want/need that take a lot of effort to get rid of. I just accept this and stopped trying to fight it.

Supposedly they are working on some stripped down windows OS's for the next generation of windows that will be designed for servers, but I'm thinking they may make good no frills OS's for a home box you want to mod and game with.

that's already around and all the stuff they would strip out would make it impossible to run games on it.

ProPatriaMori

embrik wrote: »

ProPatriaMori wrote: »

Stopping Network Location Awareness doesn't seem to do anything useful. I restarted explorer.exe just to make sure and the icon persists in its loathsome existence.

Network Connections I'm pretty sure I don't want to stop, since the Windows Firewall service claims to depend on it. I'll admit that I don't know much about WF's efficacy, but I don't remember it ever being indicated (even on Slashdot) that it was really a good idea not to use it.

However, now I've done a couple searches using the stuff in JHunz' message and have come across an answer that I like. For some adapters, including this one, you can configure it through the device properties (either through device manager or the configure button on the connection itself), go to the advanced tab, and set Media Status or an analogous value to "Always Connected." Since it's just a connection to a VM I think it's okay to pretend that it's always there, though I should probably put it on a different subnet than 192.168.0..

Thanks again, everybody. I think I'm going to call this solved.

Nice find, I should've gone deeper into the settings before messing w/ services. I'll have to remember this one for later.

What amazes me is that I was about to ask you what search you'd run, since I'd never ever heard of this or the registry key before, and then finally cooked one up that showed some of this stuff. This tip was at the bottom of some godforsaken comments thread off of yet another computer question and answer site.

I mean, I've been trying to do this for months and had run another search earlier that led me to disable my actual wired LAN adapter because I almost never use it. It amazes me how hard some of this can be to find.

embrik

ProPatriaMori wrote: »

embrik wrote: »

ProPatriaMori wrote: »

Stopping Network Location Awareness doesn't seem to do anything useful. I restarted explorer.exe just to make sure and the icon persists in its loathsome existence.

Network Connections I'm pretty sure I don't want to stop, since the Windows Firewall service claims to depend on it. I'll admit that I don't know much about WF's efficacy, but I don't remember it ever being indicated (even on Slashdot) that it was really a good idea not to use it.

However, now I've done a couple searches using the stuff in JHunz' message and have come across an answer that I like. For some adapters, including this one, you can configure it through the device properties (either through device manager or the configure button on the connection itself), go to the advanced tab, and set Media Status or an analogous value to "Always Connected." Since it's just a connection to a VM I think it's okay to pretend that it's always there, though I should probably put it on a different subnet than 192.168.0..

Thanks again, everybody. I think I'm going to call this solved.

Nice find, I should've gone deeper into the settings before messing w/ services. I'll have to remember this one for later.

What amazes me is that I was about to ask you what search you'd run, since I'd never ever heard of this or the registry key before, and then finally cooked one up that showed some of this stuff. This tip was at the bottom of some godforsaken comments thread off of yet another computer question and answer site.

I mean, I've been trying to do this for months and had run another search earlier that led me to disable my actual wired LAN adapter because I almost never use it. It amazes me how hard some of this can be to find.

My search in Experts Exchange was "Hide disconnected network icon"