There’s a fine line to travel between “easy to use” and “annoying”, and long-time users of Windows XP often have little things that bug them about how their computer works, and never figure out how to make those annoyances go away.
A lot of these things are actually helpful to the uninitiated user, someone who is totally new to desktop computing in general, but nothing irritates more advanced users like Windows constantly reminding them of things they already know with little balloons that pop up and interrupt their normal workflow.
Well, the good news is, most of that stuff can be disabled in a few easy steps, and I thought I’d share a couple of those items with you today.
New programs installed
It’s a little thing, but any time you install a new application on Windows XP, by default a little balloon will appear afterward telling you that you just did so.
This drives me nuts… I know that a new program has been installed. I’m the one who installed it! I’ve never understood the point of this, and I’ve had users ask me many times how to make Windows stop telling them that. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to accomplish this.
The first thing you need to do is right-click on the Start button and select “Properties”. this will bring up a window that looks like this:
Click on the “Customize” button and then on the “Advanced” tab. Don’t worry, you won’t break anything by going in here; these are simply options for what’s on the start menu, and how it behaves, that’s all.
You’ll notice on this screen there’s the option you’re looking for, second down from the top: “Highlight newly installed programs”!
Uncheck that option, click OK, and then click OK again on the other window that’s still open and voila! No more “New programs installed” notification any time you add something to your computer.
Some naysayers out there might tell you “well, this could be useful information if some application installs itself without asking you first”, which in theory is true.
HOWEVER… in my experience, most programs that will do that will also suppress that notification, so that argument is moot in my book. I say if it bugs you, disable it! It’s not going to tell you anything you don’t already know!
There are unused icons on my desktop? But I AM using them!
Every so often, Windows XP will inexplicably notify you that you have icons on your desktop that you don’t use enough to justify leaving them there, apparently.
I’ve never understood this behavior either. The way I see it, I put those icons there so that I can get to certain things quickly and efficiently. Regardless of how long it’s been since I’ve utilized them, I still need them there… I certainly can’t have Windows deciding for me which ones to delete if they’re not clicked on every single day.
Since this is yet-another-nag-that-serves-no-real-purpose — but can lead to real problems if you let the “desktop cleanup wizard” actually do its thing (“Hey… where’d my shortcut to the biannual statistics spreadsheet go? I NEED THAT NOW!”), we can pretty safely disable that as well, in only a few easy steps.
This was one of those annoyances that took me a while to figure out how to disable, and to be honest, if I haven’t had to do it in a while, I tend to forget where I need to go the next time I have to do it on someone’s computer. So this might serve as a useful procedure for myself as well, so don’t feel bad if you don’t know where it is!
Right-click anywhere on the desktop (making sure you’re not right-clicking on any icons or shortcuts or anything) and select “Properties”, which will bring up the normal Display Properties window. There, you’ll want to click on the “Desktop” tab, which will bring you to a screen that looks similar to this:
In the lower left-hand corner of this window is the Customize Desktop button. Press that and you’ll come to the screen you need. This one:
Simply uncheck the “Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard every 60 days” option, click OK, and OK again, and that message will never nag you again!
Conclusion
A lot of people ask me “how did you figure that out?” when it comes to things like this, and the answer is actually pretty simple. I dig. You won’t hurt anything by looking around in properties windows and settings screens and options dialogues, particularly if you don’t apply anything. I have found that it’s often worthwhile to play around with things like this.
What’s that, you’re not the tinkering type?
That’s okay. That’s why I write things like this. 
– Trent
Trent
jasonkallevig
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