HOW TO: Disable Notification Area Balloon Tips in Windows XP1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
2. Navigate to the following subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
3. Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips.
4. Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0.
5. Quit Registry Editor. Log off Windows, and then log back on.
These steps disable all Notification Area balloon tips for this user. There is no way to disable balloon tips for specific programs only.
If you have the EnableBalloonTips value in your registry and you find that it is set to 0 try changing it to 1 then see if the balloon tips appear when you re-boot.
Most people hate these ballooon tips after using XP for a while and want to turn them off, so you'll know where to look when you want to change the value back to 0.