Clear past icons from notification area

If you click Start > rt click > properties > taskbar tab > (bottom) customize,
you will see a lot of old/unistalled/unsued icons, in the past items.
So, how to clear these (clutter) past items from the notification area ?
Open Regedit.
Delete the 'iconstreams' and 'past icons stream' values from the following
registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Explorer\
TrayNotify
Then, open task manager, click the processes tab, click explorer.exe, and then click end process.
Next, in task manager, click file, click new task, type explorer, and then click OK. Your clutter would have cleared up !