How to stop the Passport Account Nag

Some people like WinXP balloon tips, which pop up in a yellow box and give you all sorts of info, such as "New Hardware Found", reminders, etc.  But nobody like being reminded to get a Passport account, which has some useful features, but is also used to give Microsoft a huge user base for their own purposes.  Passport is used for logging into MSN Messenger and other Microsoft online services, but what if you don't want an account? 

You can get rid of all balloon popups including this - see "Balloon Tips - How to Disable"

Or if you are one of those that likes the balloon tips, or if you are afraid you may miss some important info (you won't - trust me) - then you can leave all the tips intact and stop this one only, by simply signing up  -  or hack the registry as follows:

1. Click Start | Run and type regedit to open the Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to the following Registry key:
   HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MessengerService
3. Create a new value by clicking Edit | New | Binary Value.
4. Name the new value PassportBalloon.
5. Double click the new value in the right pane and set the Value Data to 0a in hexadecimal.
6. Close the Registry Editor.