Filed under: Windows, Microsoft
Disable those annoying Windows balloons
by Amber Rhea Sep 13th 2006 at 1:30PM
Are you sick of those Windows balloons telling you that you have unused icons on your desktop or that your LAN is connected? I don't doubt that about 1 in 100 people finds the notifications useful, but for the other 99 of us, here's a way to pop the balloons once and for all. Follow these steps (note: this has been tested only on Windows XP):
- Go to Start > Run; type regedit and press Enter.
- In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced
- Create a new DWORD value by going to Edit > New > DWORD Value. Name it EnableBalloonTips and give it value 0.
- Exit the Registry Editor.
- Log off Windows and login again to see your changes take effect.
[Via Techie Corner]
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
lakiolen said 2:34PM on 9-13-2006
Or you could alternatively use TweakUI to disable those balloons as well as do many other useful things. And it is actually provided by Microsoft.
Reply
Qwfwq said 3:34PM on 9-13-2006
I must be in those 1%, as most of the times I find the notifications helpful!
Reply
dsfsdfsdf said 4:14PM on 9-13-2006
or you just click on the "X" once and the balloon never appears again.
Reply
lakiolen said 4:51PM on 9-13-2006
@dsfsdfsdf
Why should one have to stop working to move the mouse potentially across the entire screen and back, or exiting a fullscreen app just to make some useless notification go away? There are also times when you wouldn't want them to appear in the first place, such as a presentation and the wifi notification.
Thank god Microsoft smartened up and made the notification fade out in Vista.
Reply
Masrk O'Leary said 7:25AM on 9-14-2006
It's a really bad idea to disable the balloons if you actually make use of secure wireless networks. The XP 802.1X wireless client uses a balloon at a key point in the connection process for user input. With balloons disabled, this just hangs and you can't get any further.
Reply
Elias said 12:23PM on 9-14-2006
I wish the balloons were more like growl notifications. I hate the fact that they stay there forever until dismissed. I also hate that you can't have more than one balloon at a time. Meaning, if there are 3 notifications, you get them in succession after you dismiss the previous one. It's really annoying.
Reply
noballoons said 12:33PM on 11-17-2006
Balloons are bullshit.
Reply