One of the most irritating “features” in Windows XP is the popup balloon dialog that tells you to clean your desktop. I booted up an old virtual machine a few minutes ago and encountered it again, so I decided to write up how to turn it off.

Annoying…

Right-click on the desktop and choose Properties, and then the Desktop tab, and then the Customize Desktop icon.

Now just uncheck the box for “Run Annoying Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days”

Just one example of a balloon I don’t want in my perfectly windy sky.

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Profile Photo for Lowell Heddings Lowell Heddings
Lowell is the founder and CEO of How-To Geek. He’s been running the show since creating the site back in 2006. Over the last decade, Lowell has personally written more than 1000 articles which have been viewed by over 250 million people. Prior to starting How-To Geek, Lowell spent 15 years working in IT doing consulting, cybersecurity, database management, and programming work.
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