How to kill unwanted Windows dialogue boxes

March 12, 2009 10:00 AM

Is it possible to prevent a Windows dialogue box from displaying itself?

This concerns Windows Vista, though I've seen the same thing on earlier Windows OS. I run a program and it comes up with some dumb dialogue box, such as Windows Mail tells me every time that it is getting mail. If it succeeds, no problem, if it doesn't you need to hide it, and then 15 seconds later it pops up again and you need to cancel it. Same thing with other programs that pop up a dialogue box even when I'm using another program to tell me something I couldn't possible want to know. Some give the option to "not show this dialogue box again" and then proceed to show me that same dialogue box again and ask "not show this dialogue box again"

Is there some generic program that can kill these, or convert them to a less obnoxious format.

posted by forrestal to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I dont think so. You should be addressing this on a per application basis. The OS is not doing this, the applications are, so there's no big button to disable all of them. Are you sure this cant be disabled within Windows Mail?

I know you can disable the tray notification balloons for all applications with this reg key change, but thats probably not what you are asking.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:47 AM on March 12, 2009

Best answer: If all else fails, you could write a script (with AutoIT or AutoHotkey for example) to click those buttons for you.
posted by JaredSeth at 12:12 PM on March 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

I have not used it, but on Mac's there is a program called Growl, which grabs all those notifications and sorts them into one manageable queue. It looks like there is a Windows port, which I've not used either. I think you'll still be limited by which applications actually support Growl.
posted by jrishel at 12:29 PM on March 12, 2009