How to Remove Pin to Taskbar Option For a Particular Application in Windows 7?

If you have a host application that you don’t want to be pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar, you can do so by adding a registry value in the application registration area. By default Windows prevents the following host processes from being pinned to the taskbar.

  1. RUNDLL32.EXE
  2. MSHTA.EXE
  3. DLLHOST.EXE
  4. APPLAUNCH.EXE
  5. HH.EXE
  6. WINHLP32.EXE
  7. MMC.EXE

… and other file names defined in the following registry key in string values HostApps, AddRemoveApps and AddRemoveNames

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ FileAssociation

To remove the Pin to Taskbar (and "Pin this program to taskbar") context menu options for a particular application, use these steps:

Click Start, type Regedit.exe and go to the following key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications

Create a subkey with the name of the application (say, \clsidview.exe)

Select to the newly created branch:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\clsidview.exe

In the right pane, create a String value named IsHostApp



Exit the Registry Editor.

This prevents the application ("clsidview.exe", in this example) from being pinned to the Taskbar. For more information, see topic Registering an Application as a Host Process at MSDN.

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Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a consecutive ten-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in the Windows Shell/Desktop Experience category, from 2003 to 2012. He loves to troubleshoot and write about Windows. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

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