How do I disable the messages that pop-up a little now and then, telling me that I have new programs installed when I hover the "all programs" in the start menu and telling me that I have hidden icons in the system tray everytime I start up...?

From my previous post: This will get rid of the balloon messages Click Start , click Run , type regedit , and then press ENTER. Go to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced Right-click the right pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips . Double-click this new entry, and then give it a hexadecimal value of 0 . ALSO in the same registry directory there is a key "Start_NotifyNewApps" - this will currently be set to 1, set it to 0 to stop XP from telling you you have new applications installed. (XP is what you make it!) Quit Registry Editor. Log off Windows, and then log back on. Note that this is only for the current user.

Even simpler...download powertoys for xp, open tweakui, click on "taskbar", and uncheck "Enable balloon tips"