How to: Disable popup warnings in Windows XP
Windows XP may be one of the more stable and developed operating systems (Vista is like a beta right now). But there are many irritating aspects in Windows XP.
Windows has a really stupid popup system, which pops up for every unnecessary thing imaginable. For example, there is a popup to warn that disk space is low on the system drive (usually C:\). Also, there is a popup for alerting you that a new program installed. As if you didn’t know that you’ve installed a program!
There is an easy registry hack to get rid of all these popups. Do not be appalled by a registry edit - this is really simple.
Open up the registry editor - go to Run, type regedit and click OK. Backing up the registry before a hack is always a good idea, so click File > Export, choose a location and click save. Then, proceed to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Right click on the right-hand pane, make New> DWORD Value and name it EnableBallonTips. Set the value to 0 to disable ballontips, and set it back to 1 to enable balloontips.
This hack disables most balloontips. In order to eliminate all popups, some more work is required. In each of the following locations, change the values to 0 to disable balloontips.
- Location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\
- Change the value of FolderContentsInfoTip to 0
- Location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\
- Change the value of ShowInfoTip to 0.
- Location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\tips\Show
- Change the value of Show to 0
If anything goes wrong, restore the registry file that you had explored before and settings will be restored.
Nirmal said on March 4th, 2008
I prefer to have the pop up warnings, this gives an idea about the system condition because I’m running a Vista and not a Leopard.
Post authorSumesh said on March 5th, 2008
@Nirmal: But don’t you feel irritated by a popup, for example when you’re writing a good post and ideas are flowing out? I hate popups then, and popups may even disrupt my flow of writing.
Manas said on March 6th, 2008
Pop-ups can be informative sometimes. Anyway I have never find Vista’s pop-ups to be too irritating.
A suggestion for your blog, try to modify your template to include the number of comments below each post on the home page.
Post authorSumesh said on March 6th, 2008
@Manas: You’re the second person to tell me popups are not irritating. Maybe I’m the only one irritated by it?
I’d included number of comments initially, but lower number of comments showing up is worse than not showing it. I hope you understand.
Joshua Clanton - Design for the WEB said on March 6th, 2008
That’s pretty neat. I didn’t realize that you could disable the Windows popups.
Though I must say that I don’t find the popups annoying unless they are happening pretty frequently. In fact, I’d rather appreciate a warning that my C drive is getting low on disk space. I’d notice eventually, but that gives me a chance to clean things out before it becomes an issue.
If I’m writing a good post and a popup comes up (it’s only happened twice in the past couple of months), I just check to see whether it is important. If not, I close it. If so, I make a note to act on later, and then I close it. This doesn’t really interrupt the flow of my writing at all.
Nirmal said on March 7th, 2008
I agree with Manas, Vista popups are not irritating at all.
Post authorSumesh said on March 7th, 2008
@Nirmal: Maybe you’re not irritated, but not at all? I hate it when it says you’ve a new program installed, or that disk space is less -which are things you’d know anyway. And if you don’t solve the issues, the popups are repeated -which is the worst part.
Jack said on April 7th, 2008
I agree that some pop-ups are ok, but some pop-ups are very annoying. For example, I have a small laptop, and each time I click start->All Programs, it pops up a warning that not all the programs are shown. Some of the annoying can be eliminated via certain settings. You give a good way to turn off more. Microsoft needs to stop these kind of stupid practice. Linux is catching up.
Jumbo Shrimp said on April 18th, 2008
Did the above. Changed all four values, no joy.