>   When tde launches, the virtual keyboard icon is
> always in the systray. Where do I turn this off so it does NOT start on login? Here
> is a screenshot of the annoying bugger:
> 
> http://www.3111skyline.com/dl/dt/trinity/ss/virtual-keyboard-autostart.jpg

My first guess was kvkbd but none of the png images in the sources look like the one in your screen capture.

Some of the traditional places to look for autostart apps:

/usr/share/autostart
/opt/trinity/share/autostart
$TDEHOME/Autostart
/etc/xdg/autostart
/etc/xfce/xdg/autostart
/usr/local/share/autostart

One test is to use a different environment such as KDE4, Xfce, fluxbox, etc. If the icon appears again then look in the global autostart directories.

if the problem is local to TDE then perhaps run grep -i "Autostart=true" $TDEHOME/share/config/* and see what appears.

Darrell