Can System Tooltips be Turned Off?

Published on September 19, 2005 By Daiwa In Windows Software

Is there a setting in the Registry or elsewhere that will turn off tooltips system-wide (XP & Win2K)?

TIA,
Daiwa

Comments

on Sep 19, 2005

Registry Key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Data Type: REG_DWORD [Dword Value] // Value Name: ShowInfoTip
Modify/Create the Value Name [ShowInfoTip] according to the Value Data listed below.
Value Data: [0 - ShowInfoTip Disabled / 1 - ShowInfoTip Enabled]

Reboot

Daiwa

on Sep 19, 2005

Thanks, yrag. They can be so annoying, those tooltips.

Cheers,
Daiwa

Fuzzy Logic

on Sep 19, 2005

What about those annoying tooltips on the taskbar? Can you turn those off?

Daiwa

on Sep 19, 2005

I'll let you know, Fuz, but I think the key refers to the Explorer process, so should also turn off Taskbar tooltips. Unless you have experience otherwise.

Cheers,
Daiwa

aimzzz

on Sep 19, 2005

I'm with you, FL. The tt I want rid of are on the Start Button, Start panel & More Programs list. I thought maybe there's a WB or SkinStudio setting I didn't know about, but I always forget to ask when in here.

aimzzz

on Sep 19, 2005

bloop- double-clicked

Daiwa

on Sep 20, 2005

Well, changing that key did not seem to do anything - I still get tooltips all over the place, including the TaskBar & StartPanel.

Any other ideas?

I'd dearly love to get rid of them.

Cheers,
Daiwa

yrag

on Sep 20, 2005

OK...try this:

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
Advanced]
Value Name: EnableBalloonTips
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disabled, 1 = enabled)

ama02

on Sep 20, 2005

TweakUI will allow you to turn off tooltip balloons. It's great because it has many other features on it. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Fuzzy Logic

on Sep 20, 2005

Nah, it's not balloon tips - got rid of those ages ago. It's those annoying things, like 'click here to begin' etc.

For crying out loud, doesn't Microsoft realize we do have intelligence enough to know what a start button is for, grrrr! Hope these annoyances are fixed in Vista.

Daiwa

on Sep 20, 2005

I tried TweakUI and that didn't get rid of the TaskBar/StartMenu tooltips either. And the EnableBalloonTips Reg entry was already set to (0).

Thanks for the input guys - appreciate it. Any other tricks turn up, let us know.

Cheers,
Daiwa

Corky_O

on Sep 21, 2005

Fuzzy,

I found that modifying the string (folder 34 > line 533) in "explorer.exe" from "Click here to begin" to just the "" symbols - then recompiling > saving as new file > change the data in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Winlogon\Shell" from "explorer.exe" to the modified file, forced Windows to drop the Start button balloon.

Used "ResHack" to do it.

Will continue to poke around to see if I can find the magic location of the taskbar balloons.

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