Admin Tips
- Windows Server 2008/2003/2000/XP/NT Administrator Knowledge Base
  - Windows XP
    - Registry Tips
      - Command shell
        Get Rid Of Those Balloons!

Section(s): Command shell
Published on Dec 06, 2005.
Last Modified on Dec 06, 2005.
Last Modified by Mitch Tulloch.
Rated 4.5 out of 5 based on 59 votes.

Balloon tips can be annoying if they keep appearing--here's how to eliminate them.

I recently bought a Tablet PC from Motion Computing and I use it for mobile working within our offices where we have a wireless access point set up. But when I'm near the perimeter of our wireless coverage area, I often lose connectivity temporarily and the result is an annoying balloon tip that says "Wireless Network Connection is now connected". It won't go away until I click the close gadget on it, and that's annoying. After all, I can check my wireless connectivity any time by clicking on the wireless network icon in my system tray, so who needs this extra notification?

Well I discovered you can kill all balloon tip notifications by tweaking the registry. Just open regedit.exe and find the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Now under this key create a new DWORD value named EnableBalloonTips and assign it the value of 0. Then log off and on again to make the setting take effect. The result? No more annoying balloon tips getting in the way of what you're trying to work on.

Postscript

But wait! It turns out that while this setting will disable most balloon tips, it won't disable them all. Here are a few more registry settings you can set to 0 to disable other balloons on Windows XP:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\ShowInfoTip
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\FolderContentsInfoTip
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\StartButtonBalloonTip
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\tips\Show

As usual, be careful editing your registry yadda yadda yadda ;-)

Mitch Tulloch (MVP Windows Server) is a well-known industry expert in Windows administration and security and author of fourteen books including the Microsoft Encyclopedia of Networking, the Microsoft Encyclopedia of Security, Windows Server Hacks and IIS6 Administration. Mitch is based in Winnipeg, Canada and is President of MTIT Enterprises, an IT content development company. You can find more information about him on his website www.mtit.com

About Mitch Tulloch

Mitch Tulloch was lead author for the Windows Vista Resource Kit from Microsoft Press, which is the book for IT pros who want to deploy, maintain and support Windows Vista in mid- and large-sized network environments. Mitch was also the author of Introducing Windows Server 2008 and technical project lead for the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit, both books also from Microsoft Press. For more information on these and other books by Mitch, see www.mtit.com .