Pop-up messages and balloon tips can become annoying in XP. Windows relies on these messages to inform users of what is going on with their computer. Many of the messages never seem to be relevant and more importantly, many of the messages are so self-explanatory that they are completely unnecessary. Take for example the balloon tip that appears indicating that I have unused icons on my desktop.

Now this is just my personal opinion and I’m sure some many people don’t mind all the balloon tip messages. In any case, you can prevent these messages from appearing by making a change to the Registry as described below.

1. Open the registry editor and navigate to the following key:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explo-rer.
2. Right click on Advanced, point to New and click DWORD value.
3. Type in EnableBalloonTips.
4. Double click the new DWORD value and change the value to 0.