
Are you sick of those Windows balloons telling you that you have unused icons on your desktop or that your LAN is connected? I don't doubt that about 1 in 100 people finds the notifications useful, but for the other 99 of us, here's a way to pop the balloons once and for all.
Follow these steps (note: this has been tested only on Windows XP):
- Go to Start > Run; type regedit and press Enter.
- In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced
- Create a new DWORD value by going to Edit > New > DWORD Value. Name it EnableBalloonTips and give it value 0.
- Exit the Registry Editor.
- Log off Windows and login again to see your changes take effect.
To re-activate balloon notifications, change the value of EnableBalloonTips to 1.
[Via
Techie Corner]
Tags: balloon notifications, BalloonNotifications, hacks, regedit, registry, Windows hacks, Windows notifications, Windows registry, Windows XP, WindowsHacks, WindowsNotifications, WindowsRegistry, WindowsXp
Comments
7
Subscribe to commentslakiolenSep 13th 2006 2:34PM
Or you could alternatively use TweakUI to disable those balloons as well as do many other useful things. And it is actually provided by Microsoft.
QwfwqSep 13th 2006 3:34PM
I must be in those 1%, as most of the times I find the notifications helpful!
dsfsdfsdfSep 13th 2006 4:14PM
or you just click on the "X" once and the balloon never appears again.
lakiolenSep 13th 2006 4:51PM
@dsfsdfsdf
Why should one have to stop working to move the mouse potentially across the entire screen and back, or exiting a fullscreen app just to make some useless notification go away? There are also times when you wouldn't want them to appear in the first place, such as a presentation and the wifi notification.
Thank god Microsoft smartened up and made the notification fade out in Vista.
Masrk O'LearySep 14th 2006 7:25AM
It's a really bad idea to disable the balloons if you actually make use of secure wireless networks. The XP 802.1X wireless client uses a balloon at a key point in the connection process for user input. With balloons disabled, this just hangs and you can't get any further.
EliasSep 14th 2006 12:23PM
I wish the balloons were more like growl notifications. I hate the fact that they stay there forever until dismissed. I also hate that you can't have more than one balloon at a time. Meaning, if there are 3 notifications, you get them in succession after you dismiss the previous one. It's really annoying.
noballoonsNov 17th 2006 12:33PM
Balloons are bullshit.