Disable Notification Balloons in XP
If you are annoyed with Windows popping up a balloon notification telling you things you already know every time you turn on your machine, here is a quick tip on completely disabling them. (Note this requires a registry modification so be sure to back up your registry before making any changes.)
You should note that this will disable all balloon notifications, so proceed with caution.
Click on Start \ Run and type in regedit
Now we will navigate to this path in your registry.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
On the right pane right click on an open area and choose New \ DWORD Value
You will see New Value #1. Change this to EnableBalloonTips.
Next double click the new registry entry you created. In the Value Data field set it to 0 (zero). Make sure Hexadecimal is selected under Base. Click OK.
Finally restart your system and enjoy the clean boot up with no balloons popping up at you.
To remove this registry hack, just delete the registry key that you created.
Shouldn't it be HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced?
Cody your exactly correct! See what sleep deprivation does! lol … Thanks for pointing that out. The adjustments have been made. Good eye!
Freaking nice. That "unused desktop icons" balloon tip form my wife's icons has almost led me to uxoricide. Thanks buckets, great as usual!
Sorry, I meant *from* my wife's icons, not form. And yes I've been waiting for a long time to be able to use the word uxoricide.
Hi,
Isn't this a system-wide setting that will turn off balloon tips for all applications for the current user? If you do this you won't see any balloons at all?
Also, you don't need to restart your machine for the setting to take effect, you just need to restart the explorer.exe process.
Cheers.
OJ your are correct it does turn off all balloon notifications for current user.
This will disable all baloons-not a good idea.In stead of mucking around with the registry, here's a simpler approach:
Just stop the automatic updates service and set it to manual from automatic. You can also disable the automatic updates service in the services control manager. When you eventually reboot, re-enable it or change it back to "Automatic".
Regards,
Adipolle
Is there any way to just disablethese ballons in a specific app or a specific error lIke say "Outlook is trying to retreive data from the exchange server"
I ask June 1 TJmurph's question. I have a large balloon labeled as "System Alert!". It's seems to be a notification created by spyware or malware. I've cleaned my system but this remains. If I click on it accidently, it opens an antivirus website. How do I delete just this one notification?
Hi TLR
That "balloon alert" is possibly created by the mysor virus. Try AVG http://free.grisoft.com/. It removed it for one of my clients.
PLEASE HELP… I've followed this advice perfectly, and it doesn't work for me :- (
I even tried using "Free WIndow Registry Repair", just in case I messed something up… Do you have any idea why it wouldn't work? It's in the right place, I spelled everything correctly, value set at 0… restarted, log-out log-in… and no change… It's really upsetting me, switching from a Mac to a PC, I can't stand the balloons…. They're very distracting… Disrespectful even…
I'm on a Dell XPS400
What could be stopping this from working?? Do I need to re-install Windows XP, and have the balloon hack be the very first thing I do. It's worth that much to me… But I'd hate to have to go through all that…
* I've also scanned for virus (PC Chillin) and I'm all clean… I've hit a dead end…
Brad, have you tried AVG?
No, I haven't tried AVG… Would the free version be good enough or would I need the "Internet Security" deal? Do you find this better than PC Chillin? I already have a subscription with that… Thanks for your help! Appreciate it!
AVG Free did it previously for one of my clients. Uninstall PC-Cillin, install AVG free. Scan. After removing virus, reboot, new scan. If it finds more repeat process. Then uninstall AVG and re-install PC-Cillin.
If product x is 99% effective at detecting viruses out of 120 000 viruses that leaves 1200 viruses not detected. By using product y maybe their product pick up some of those missed originally. Sort of a second opinion.
I have great doubt in my mind if there are any product available which are 99% effective!! That's why I periodically scan my pc with 5 different AV's.
In case someone doesn't want to go into their registry, here's a way to JUST get rid of the *&#@ 'unused icons' bs:
Display Properties >
Desktop tab >
> Customize the Desktop
> turn off the 'run desktop cleanup wizard every 60 days' checkbox.
Resolved! My security software finally caught on to my "System Alert!" problem. I updated my security soft many times before it worked. This reinforced my concerns about system security and I learned a little. Thanks!
This method worked for disabling the balloons, but the sound is still there! My problem was with a recurring balloon, which is gone but i still get the "pop" every couple seconds. Is there any way to fix this?
Turn the sounds off.
This doesn't work for I.E 7 ballons that annoyingly blink about when the mouse is over a text input area. I've tried I.E settings, this reg tip and others, but none of them work.
How do downgrade I.E ?
did this edit and fixes the balloon thing whitch I'm extreamly happy about but now I"m having another issue. I have my start bar to auto hide so its off the screen until I move my mouse to the bottom. Now when I relog back in after going into standby or hibernation my laptop will reconnect back to my router and I get no balloon whitch I'm happy about. But now I have to click on the wireless icon in the system try and bring up the wireless network pannel just for the start bar to go back into auto hide any input on this I'm totaly stumped and would like to fix it.