Tip: Disable XP’s Balloon Tips

If you’re like me and find it annoying when Windows XP pops open alert balloons from the taskbar’s notification area, there is a way to disable this feature.

Open your registry using regedit and go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Create a new DWORD value (or modify the value, if it exists) called EnableBalloonTips and set the value to 0. Exit regedit, and restart or log out for the changes to take effect.

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2 Comments

  1. Anonymous
    Posted May 6, 2004 at 5:11 pm | Permalink

    I too have disabled XP’s balloon tips, but I did it using Microsoft’s TweakUI, part of the PowerToys package. This utility gives ‘power users’ the ability to make adjustments to Windows that would otherwise require tinkering with the registry or system files.
    PowerToys doesn’t come standard with Windows, but you can download it from their site.
    Disabling the balloon tips is only of the many options that PowerToys provides. For instance, it lets you adjust the menu delay, which I have set to 0 – speeds up things nicely.
    Check out PowerToys (and TweakUI in specific) if you would like more control over the way Windows behaves.

  2. Tony
    Posted December 26, 2004 at 5:41 pm | Permalink

    I have downloaded and installed Tweekui, and it has many great features, however, when I checked the box “disabled balloon tips,” it did not work. They are still there and annoying. Any ideas.

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