Disable those annoying Windows balloons

by Amber Rhea on September 13, 2006 at 01:30 PM

Disable Windows balloon notifications 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