Disable Balloon Tips in Windows Vista

This article explains how to disable Balloon Tips in Windows Vista. I thought it would be a nice follow up article on the one that described how to make the balloon tips transparent. I personally think that Balloon Tips have no right to be there at all, they look awful and most do not contain information that are important in any way. I disabled them the first day I started using Windows XP and I did the same on my Windows Vista notebook. Balloon Tips are a waste of time in my opinion. Let me explain how you can disable balloon tips in Windows Vista.

• Press Windows+R, enter gpedit.msc and hit enter. This opens the Group Policy Editor. Please note that the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) is not available in Windows Vista Home and Vista Home Premium. I’m going to outline how to disable balloon tips on those editions at the end
• Go to User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Start Menu and Taskbar.
• Select Remove Balloon Tips, right-click it and choose properties from the context menu
• Select Enable from the options and click ok
• Close the Group Policy Editor
• Reboot Windows Vista

As I said earlier gpedit.msc is not available in Windows Vista Home and Home Premium which means that we have to rely on the registry to disable those annoying balloon tips in Windows Vista.

• Press Windows+R, type regedit and hit enter. This starts the registry editor
• Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER / SOFTWARE / Microsoft / Windows / CurrentVersion / Explorer / Advanced
• Create a new Dword and name it EnableBalloonTips
• The value should be automatically set to 0, if it is not change it to 0
• Reboot Windows Vista

Tags: disable-balloon-tips, gpedit.msc, no-gpedit.msc, vista home, windows-vista
Categories: Knowledge, Operating Systems, Windows

Related posts:

1. Transparent Balloon Tips in Windows Vista
2. Disable Recent Documents Listing in Windows
3. Enable Vista Aero in Windows Vista Home Basic
4. Enable or disable the Windows Firewall in Vista in one click
5. 10 Simple Ways to Speed up Windows Vista
6. Disable Low Disk Space Warning
7. Block installation of Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1
8. Five Quick Windows Tips

14 Responses to “Disable Balloon Tips in Windows Vista”

1. eeh me says:

   March 28, 2007 at 3:48 pm

   Thanks,
   One reason less, for not buying vista.

   Reply
2. Cell Phone Reviews says:

   September 4, 2007 at 1:31 am

   Great post. I think this will help a lot of Vista users get rid of an annoying feature.

   Reply
3. Annoying Vista Balloons says:

   March 30, 2008 at 6:30 pm

   [...] I wondered if there is a way to turn off the annoying windows vista information balloons [...]

   Reply
4. Bob Engelbardt says:

   June 6, 2008 at 11:20 pm

   I followed the instructions for removing balloon tips in VISTA but one that really bothers still comes up. This is the one that says “Some Start menu items can’t be displayed”. Then it recommends to change the screen resolution to provide more room. How do we eliminate that one?

   Reply
5. dirie says:

   September 29, 2009 at 12:28 pm

   is it possible to turn the balloons off without changing reqister? I have register editing block in the office and I hate the balloons!!! help me please

   Reply