Well, it seems you got it !
So, I replaced :
<AutoCheckForUpdates />
by :
<AutoCheckForUpdates>False</AutoCheckForUpdates>
and relaunched MySQL Notifier.
Then, it wanted to connect to Internet, and then to have a list of files in
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Workbench CE 6.0.9\*.*
These were signs it was alive.
It wanted an access to the DNS service, and then displayed its icon, with a contextual menu saying it manages 1 service and 0 instance.
I selected a command that opened MySQL Workbench, perhaps not really the way the text let suppose, but this is no more a question of launching MySQL Notifyer, but of using it, so after reading the documentation it can be the object of another thread.
So it runs. Do you know why it wanted to read the contents of the screen after that ? Or perhaps it was MySQL Workbench.
It can be considered strange that it only wants to connect to Internet, once you told it not to update, but ... at least you got it open.
Thank you.