Disable Windows XP Notification Bubbles / Balloons
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If you use Windows you might not be overly fond of the little bubbles that pop up down on your Task Bar. You know the ones — warnings about your firewall and unused items on your desktop?
A simple registry edit will stop the bubbles, for all applications. You can watch the screencast to see two ways to make the change. You can either make the edit manually using regedit, a registry editor that comes with Windows. Or you can download a file from Murphy and double-click it. The file will make the change.
You don’t have much to worry about. In fact, you can right-click the file (after unzipping it), select Edit, and you’ll see it’s just a couple lines of text. The change is easily undone. Simply delete the entry from your registry.
The balloons will stop appearing for all applications - only for the user you’re logged in as when you make the change. Log out and back in to test your results.
If you’re comfortable in the registry go ahead and make this entry:
Add a DWORD value in the following key, and name it EnableBalloonTips. Set its hex value to zero.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Not a registry person? Watch the screencast.
I don’t even know if they have bubbles in Vista…
16. April 2008 at 1:37 am :
I can’t wait to do this. My PC is almost useless because of all those bubbles.
THANK YOU!
5. May 2008 at 9:34 am :
Huhh, it’s good to know, because this ‘fcing’ bubble with the You have not enough space came up all the time!!! now it’s much better
9. May 2008 at 8:17 pm :
Thank you sir! I had to do this once upon a time a long time ago and have since re-installed XP on a partition on my mac and had forgotten how to do this. I really don’t need to be reminded hourly that my desktop is cluttered! Who are the nimrods that think that is helpful?
9. August 2008 at 11:14 pm :
Awesome dude!! Thank you so much for posting this. Indeed there are bubbles in Vista (I am using it with the Windows Classic theme that looks like Windows 2000) but I hear that they are less intrusive in the Aero interface.
I shall try the registry value to see if it works well under Vista. Thanks again!
11. August 2008 at 2:14 pm :
I just updated Spybot S&D and bubbles were popping up about every 5 seconds.
There’s no way I would consider getting rid of Spybot, so I had to give your small file a try.
IT WORKED!
Thank You.
11. October 2008 at 3:30 pm :
i want my bubbles back, anybody know how i can get em back
28. October 2008 at 11:37 pm :
Thanks! Those things were driving me crazy.
7. November 2008 at 8:12 pm :
Life without those pesky & irritating bubbles is bliss! Well done!
11. December 2008 at 2:03 pm :
I am on Windows XP and added the DWORD value set it to hex 0 and still get the bubbles even after the reboot, any other idea’s?
Thanks
16. December 2008 at 5:11 am :
Same situation as Erin above
16. December 2008 at 2:39 pm :
Did you try the download? If you make the changes yourself did you check spelling and case?
2. January 2009 at 5:31 am :
Thanks, these bubbles were driving me nuts. I edited the registery myself as per your instructions and rebooted. It worked great. NO BUBBLES. Thank you very much.
dgb (:-}>
29. January 2009 at 4:58 pm :
I found the DWORD allready in my regestry and the end value to the far right was 1. I changed it to 0 and it worked. I think if I wanted the bubbles back I would change the DWORD value back to 1. I have not tried it.
17. February 2009 at 1:45 am :
Freon Don was correct. If you would like to re enable the balloon/bubbles, all you have to do is go through the steps above then reasign the “0″ to “1″ in the hex field, then reboot windows. Mine got turned off somehow during an error while reformatting my computer.
24. April 2009 at 6:44 am :
I’m the only one in this world. Can please someone join me in this life? Or maybe death…
29. April 2009 at 7:28 pm :
You are AWESOME!!! Bubbles are a bloody pain on a netbook, this made my pc experience SO much better!! Stop by my site sometime for a free ebook!
27. May 2009 at 2:06 am :
The balloon pictured above is part of Windows Security Center. You can turn off it’s alerts by opening the Security Center (in Control Panel). On the left side of the Security Center dialog box, under Resources, click “Change the way Security Center Alerts me.” You can decide which alerts to enable or disable.
9. September 2009 at 9:47 pm :
like michael jackson, i do quite like ‘bubbles’.
4. December 2009 at 5:59 pm :
Thanks to Bill. I too were irritated with these bubbles, but liked the ones for emails. So I found Bill’s suggestion to check the pesky bubble shown in the picture above from the security centre.
I’m sure each other program has options to delete the alerts withing them.
16. December 2009 at 12:04 am :
Bill’s suggestion adopted. Unchecked the three offenders in Security Centre and think that this will remove the main source of irritation. If It isn’t sufficient I’ll go to Murphy. Thank you.
24. December 2009 at 5:12 am :
thanks mr murphy
those bubbles were incredible annoying to me…. cant believe i have been having with them for so long! I used the registry method… i read someone want em back ….have you lost your mind! lol
25. February 2010 at 6:23 pm :
There’s no need to go into the registry. Just download and install Microsoft’s TweakUI powertool for XP. There’s a setting in there called “Enable balloon popups”, simply un-check it. Nuisance solved.
30. July 2010 at 8:46 pm :
???? ??? ???? ?? ????? ??? ????
21. August 2010 at 8:42 am :
Thank you so much! Before I had to install some apps every time to achieve that.
24. September 2010 at 9:03 pm :
Gates and his minions
cause trouble and pain,
While MurphyMac’s code
makes XP right as rain !
13. May 2011 at 10:08 am :
Thanks a million!! Finally got rid of those annoying balloons. Shows how good the microsoft team are that they couldn’t do it!! Thanks once again. Mike
6. October 2011 at 7:53 pm :
Kool dude…simple remedy for an irriating aspect of XP.