Hide Unread Email Messages Notification on XP Logon Welcome Screen

After Windows XP boots up to Welcome Screen or Logon Screen for user to log on to Windows desktop, there may be a message on the Logon Welcome page that user have certain number of unread mail messages, together with the email address of the account. For example, “1 unread email messages”. The unread email messages count also appear when system is locked, and user is required to enter the password to enter the desktop again.

The count of number of unread messages is generated for each users individually, and normally will be shown after user starts to use Microsoft’s related email clients or services, such as Microsoft Outlook and Windows Live Hotmail. The count takes into account all unread messages from programs like Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, and etc, depending on how these programs are used and setup.

It’s pretty useless and something annoying to display the number of unread mail messages available, especially when it also display user’s email address together. It’s possible to to remove these list and count of unread email messages on the Welcome Screen page with the following tricks.

The most easy way is to use TweakUI PowerToys, which the TweakUiPowertoySetup.exe setup file can be downloaded from Microsoft Download Center. After installing the TweakUI, run the program, locate and select Logon in the left pane. Then click on Unread Mail. Unselect and uncheck the Show unread mail on Welcome screen option. Users can choose whether to apply the new setting (without unread email count) only to user’s account or for all users on the computer.

It’s also possible to modify the registry directly to get rid of the unread email messages count on Logon Welcome Screen. To do so, run Registry Editor (regedit.exe), and the navigate to the one of the following registry keys:

For current logged on user:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail

For all users on the computer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail

On the right pane, find a value data named MessageExpiryDays. If it’s not found, create a new DWORD key named MessageExpiryDays. Set the value of “MessegaExpiryDays” to 0, and save the setting.

Once disabled, unread emails count notification will no longer be displayed.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Tips & Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.