Getting rid of the Windows "help bubbles"

Giles Habibula · Post by **Giles Habibula** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 6:16 am

Running XP for the first time in my life and can't for the life of me figure out how to shut off the damn "help" bubbles that keep popping up whenever Windows starts (and I have to manually "X" them to shut them off, one by one) and every time my mouse goes across something.

There's gotta be a way to shut them off, but I've looked everywhere I can think of and even used the "Help" feature, which didn't help.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 10:31 am

I know of one method, but it involves a registry edit.

Use regedit:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]

Add: EnableBalloonTips

Set it to 0

Freezer-TPF- · Post by **Freezer-TPF-** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:14 am

If you don't want to manually edit the registry, you can get Powertoys for Windows XP (you want TweakUI), which allows you to enable/disable the Enable Balloon tips setting (look under "Taskbar" in TweakUI). Find TweakUI for XP here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/down ... rtoys.mspx

Jeff Jones also has a link to it on his very helpful PC links page:

http://jeffjones.org

Giles Habibula · Post by **Giles Habibula** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 2:20 pm

Thanks guys.
I can't believe this was designed to leave them on all the time and they didn't put a little on/off switch somewhere in the basic settings. What do they think we'd need help all our lives with this OS?

disarm · Post by **disarm** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 2:33 pm

i don't think i ever did anything specifically to turn them off and i haven't seen one in a long time (almost a year on this XP install). i may be wrong, but i think they may just stop appearing on their own after a little while. the TweakUI method works right away though, and i think everyone should use TweakUI anyway...does a lot of great things 8)

Giles Habibula · Post by **Giles Habibula** » Sat Dec 11, 2004 2:41 pm

I haven't used Tweak UI in several years, and had forgotten all about it. It's a slick little program and it did indeed take care of this problem immediately.