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We've all seen them. They're the distracting yellowish popup balloons that appear over the notification area in the Windows XP taskbar. A common one is for taking the Windows XP tour after a fresh install. Some application specific ones are for Resharper and Visual Studio. Is there a way to disable these popups on a system level, for good, so I never see them again?

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They're there for a reason - you'll be breaking functionality of a lot of programs by turning them off. – ajm Jul 15 '09 at 22:33
@Andy, there's a Microsoft KB article specifically referring to it as a "problem", and they provide a solution! :) Seems to me if this functionality was crucial then there shouldn't be an option to disable it. Regardless, I'll take the risk. – Jonathon Watney Jul 15 '09 at 23:00

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See this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307729

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Exactly what I was looking for. – Jonathon Watney Jul 15 '09 at 22:54
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I believe the TweakUI utility (224kb) comes with an option to "disable balloon tips"

Here's a screenshot:

Enable balloon tips

Disabling the first option should achieve what you want.

Plus, it has lots of other cool settings to mess with. :)

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Thanks for that but the regedit instructions that Adam linked to was exactly what I was looking for. – Jonathon Watney Jul 15 '09 at 22:54
it's all good. I consider TweakUI a must have which is why I recommended it over simply editing the registry. – Paolo Bergantino Jul 15 '09 at 23:03
up vote 1 down vote

You can remove the bubble messages from taskbar in this way for windows xp

  1. goto start menu
  2. select control panel -> Security Center
  3. on the left sidebar choose on the link saying "Change the way Security Center alerts me"
  4. uncheck the "automatic update" option.

and the red balloon from the taskbar will be removed.

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