Windows 10: How to remove borders around tray icons in a Windows theme?

Specifically, this is what I'm talking about:





There are boxes/borders around tray icons (and the start button, too). It's the only thing that I don't like with this High Contrast #2 theme, but I find it midly irrtating.


Thank you.

:)

 

Remove windows defender icon from the tray on win 10

Hi Vaso,

To help you remove Windows Defender icon from your computer's system tray, you may follow these steps:

• Right-click taskbar, and then choose Settings.
  
• Under Notification area, click Select which icons appear on the taskbar.
  
• Turn off the Windows Defender notification icon.

Do let us know how it goes.

 

USB Drives plugged in but No Safely Remove Icon in Tray, and


....no drives listed in Hardware List.

When I plug USB drives in, the Safely Remove Hardware icon does not appear in in system tray (its not hidden either)

First, I went to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Select which Icons Appear on the Taskbar...





.. and found it was already on

Next I tried using the solution in this post...

Solved No safely remove icon in tray any more after Windows 10 Anniversary up - Windows 10 Forums

...making a shortcut from "rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll", but when I run the shortcut, there are no devices listed...





(in this screenshot, you can see two USB drives in the Explorer window in the BG but nothing listed in the panel. )

NOTE: They are listed in Disk Management and in the Device Manager under Disk Drives, and they function just fine..
I think the Safely Remove Hardware icon is not appearing because despite being detected and showing in Explorer, Device Manager and Disk Management, its not being listed in this panel for some reason.


NOTE2: I recently installed a new motherboard.

ASUS B150M-A
CPU Intel Core i5 - 6500 (3.2 GHz)
Mem 4096 MB (DDR4 - 2133)

I am 100% sure it was working before that, but I cannot say for sure if it was still working after that.
A friend suggested that it might be a setting in BIOS, but I have looked through it and nothing stands out.

Any suggestions would be welcome.


ETA: this is not the system listed in my System Specs page. That is another computer which I still have.

 

Border around my start menu and system tray.

I came back to my computer after running some errands and my wallpaper was gone and I had a weird border around my start menu. It's also on
my hidden icons menu. Also various windows have the entire border as blue. Also changing the start menus settings from allow transparent on/off it removes the border however the icon tray retains the border, beginning to think this is a windows bug.

I have also run a couple virus scans just in case.