Disabling Windows Notification Pop-ups

One of the features that is most criticized in Windows XP and Vista are the notification balloons that popup to show alerts. These notification balloons catch your attention and if you are in middle of doing something important on your computer, you can be unnecessarily disturbed by such notifications.

What's most annoying, the notifications keep on showing up again and again even though you are aware of the alerts like disabled firewall or updates are ready to be installed. Does this bug you? If so, then read this article to learn how to disable those pesky notification pop-ups.

Disabling Notification Pop-ups in Windows 7

In Windows 7, the notification alerts are less disturbing as they do not try to grab your attention by popping up repeatedly. The notification feature in Windows 7 is a greatly improved one compared to Vista... but still somewhat upsetting. When it shows an alert, it remains in the system tray as a small icon with flag and a red cross. It can contain multiple notification alerts.

If you want to just turn off the notifications in Windows 7 though, you can just do the following;

1. Go to Control Panel and there click on Action Center to open it.

2. On the left panel, you need to click on Change Action Center Settings. Here you can tell Windows to show you only those alerts that you want to see. Various alerts such as windows updates, internet security updates, virus protection, windows backup and so on.

Disabling Notification Pop-ups on Windows Vista

In Windows Vista, if you want to disable notifications, you need to access the Group Policy. Here is how you can do it:

1. Go to Start Search you need to type ‘gpedit.msc' and click OK. You will now see the Local Group Policy Editor.

2. Click on User Configuration and then Administrative Templates and then Start Menu and Taskbar and under Settings, you will see an option to "Turn off all balloon notifications".

Note: Vista Home and Vista Premium users do not have access to Group Policy. It can be only accessed through these steps:

1. In Start Search, you need to type regedit to open Registry Editor.

2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer> Advanced.

3. Now create a new 32-bit Dword and enter name as EnableBalloonTips and its value should be 0. Restart your PC and then you will not see any notifications balloons popping up on your screen.

Disabling Notification Pop-ups in Windows XP

To disable notification balloons in Windows XP, you can do the following things

Using Microsoft's Fix it Patch: You can download the Microsoft Fix it Patch 50048 from Microsoft's Support site and install it to disable the notification balloons.

Fix manually: The procedure to fix this manually is same as the procedure that is supposed to be followed in Windows Vista Home and Premium. Here are the steps:

1. In Start Search, you need to type regedit to open Registry Editor.

2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer> Advanced.

3. Now create a new 32-bit Dword and enter name as EnableBalloonTips and its value should be 0. Restart your PC and then you will not see any notifications balloons popping up on your screen.

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-By Dominic
TAGS: Windows 7 Tips Windows Vista Tips Windows XP Tips

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