Overview of the mail notification display on the Windows XP Welcome screen

The Welcome screen is displayed by default on Windows XP Home Edition-based computers and on Windows XP Professional-based computers that are not members of a domain. Under your name on the Welcome screen, there is a hyperlink that indicates the number of unread e-mail messages. If you click this link, it reveals which account the messages are from, and how many each e-mail provider contains. For example, if you have three unread e-mail messages, and you click the hyperlink under your name, you see the following information (where UserID is your user name for the corresponding e-mail account): The hyperlink is displayed only if you have an e-mail client that is capable of updating the Welcome screen running on your computer. Currently, Microsoft Outlook Express and Microsoft Windows Messenger support this feature.

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

This e-mail hyperlink is only displayed if the e-mail client that your computer is running populates the following registry key: You cannot disable this feature in the user interface, nor can you configure the Welcome screen to populate the unread message count from only a particular e-mail program. For example, you might not want your e-mail messages from UserID@hotmail.com displayed on the Welcome screen. To work around this behavior, you can set the permissions on the following registry key to read-only for the System account: When the program tries to update the registry key as new mail arrives, it will not have sufficient permission to do so and the Welcome screen will not be updated. To do this:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedit).
2. Navigate to the following folder in the registry:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail
3. Right-click the UnreadMail folder, and then click Permissions.
4. Click the System account, and then click to select the Deny check box for Full Control.
5. Click OK.
6. Quit Registry Editor.

To block only one of the e-mail clients from updating the Welcome screen, permissions to the registry key under UnreadMail" that specify the e-mail account must have System permissions set to read-only. For example,assume that you have the two following registry keys under the UnreadMail key: To block UserID@msn.com from being displayed on the screen and to retain UserID@hotmail.com, set the permissions on the UserID@msn.com key:

1. Start Registry Editor (Regedit).
2. Navigate to the following folder in the registry:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail
3. Expand the UnreadMail folder.
4. Click the e-mail provider that you do not want to be displayed on the Welcome screen.
5. Right-click the folder, and then click Permissions.
6. Click the System account, and then click to select the Deny check box for Full Control.
7. Click OK.
8. Quit Registry Editor.

For more information about writing programs to take advantage of this feature, visit the following MSDN Web site:

Note that the information in this article is provided for product support and troubleshooting purposes only. Programs that want to provide information about unread e-mail messages should use the SHSetUnreadMessageCount function. For more information, visit the following MSDN Web site: