XP Home v XP Professional

Windows XP comes in two main flavours - Home & Professional, and their use is pretty self explanatory. The 'Pro' version contains everything in the 'Home' edition, but has more tools for security implementation and networking, and most crucially, includes a built in back up tool. The 'Pro' version also contains the Group Policy Editor which is used in this tip to edit registry settings, without the group policy editor the user has to edit the registry directly which is a little trickier.

How can I stop the balloon tips in Windows XP?

In Microsoft Windows XP there is a feature known as 'Balloon Tips' that puts up little pop-ups when you hover the mouse over certain menu options, icons, toolbars etc which are designed to help people to understand what particular functions achieve, and also act as a memory jogger.

Many people like this idea, but just as many hate it and would rather not have these tips and with a little bit of work they can be removed - There are two different solutions here depending on whether you have Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional

Note - to implement these changes you must be logged in with Administrator rights no matter which version of Windows you're using

Windows XP Professional

  • Click the Start button and select the Run option.
  • Type in gpedit.msc and click on OK.
  • The Group Policy Editor will now load, and you need to navigate through User Configuration, then Administrative Templates and finally to Start Menu & Taskbar.
  • Now double click the item marked Remove Balloon Tips on Start Menu Items and select it to be enabled.

Windows XP Home

Warning - This tweak involves direct editing of the Registry, if you are unsure of what to do then please do not proceed, and always make sure you have adequate backups in case of problems. NWC can accept no responsibilty for damage caused by trying to apply this tweak

  • Click the Start button and select the Run option.
  • Type Regedit into the dialog box and hit 'Enter' to run the Registry Editor. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
  • Right click in the right hand pane and create a new DWORD Value Called Enable Balloon tips. Give it a value of 0 and click OK. To re-enable tips change this back to a value of 1


This page last updated November 24th 2009 Bookmark and Share