Controlling the Desktop Appearance in Windows Vista - Turning Off the System Tray Notifications
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The tab on the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box is called the Notification Area, and it’s called this for a reason. As users discover almost from the moment they first use their Vista computer, another function of the System Tray is to host application and operating system notifications that appear in the form of pop-up balloons. (OK, pop-up has a bad connotation; let’s say they fade in and out instead, shall we?)
Figure 4-18. No more Notification Area icons
It seems you can’t do anything about these balloon tips. Or can you? Can you turn off Vista’s capability to interrupt you with a notification?
As it just so happens, you can disable the balloons. To do so, you need either a registry hack or a piece of freely available software. I’ll discuss each.
Using the registry
As you know by now, registry settings define how the Vista operating system behaves, and that includes whether balloon tips display. To disable the notifications from appearing in the Notification Area, just follow this recipe:
- Open the Registry Editor by clicking the Start menu and typing regedit.
- Now, navigate to this key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\
Explorer\Advanced
- Create a new DWORD key calledEnableBalloonTips, and set the value to 0 (false), as shown in Figure 4-19.
Now, exit the Registry Editor and reboot. You should no longer receive Vista’s notifications in the System Tray.
Figure 4-19. Turn off balloon tips with this registry edit
Using separate software
You can also change Notification Area behavior with applications such as TweakUI.
At least I think you can. I’m taking a bit of a flyer here; Vista authors had to start writing Vista books long before the operating system was made public, and long before related utilities such as TweakUI were updated to include support for Vista.
At any rate, TweakUI is part of a suite of utilities called PowerToys. (As of this writing, the full name is PowerToys for Windows XP.) PowerToys are available for free download from this web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/ powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
Before you get carried away, note that TweakUI, as with the rest of the PowerToys, is not considered part of the operating system, and therefore is not supported by Microsoft. In fact, here’s the caveat emptor from Microsoft’s web site:
We take great care to ensure that PowerToys work as they should, but they are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about PowerToys. PowerToys are for Windows XP only.
Despite the warning, you can use the PowerToys utilities for a wide variety of tasks; disabling the Notification Area’s balloons is just one of them. And even though I’ve pointed you to a Windows XP resource, I’m told that they should be updated to include support for Windows Vista as well—as in by the time this title is nestled into your bookshelf, I’m betting.
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 This article is excerpted from chapter four of the book Windows Vista Administration: The Definitive Guide, written by Brian Culp (O'Reilly; ISBN: 0596529597). Check it out today at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.
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