The part of WGA that concerns me most is the virtual certainty that WGA Validation will falsely identify even a small percentage of Windows installations as being "counterfeit" when in fact they are not. Important: These instructions require editing the registry. You may want to start by taking a System Restore point so that you could revert to it in the event that something goes wrong. Some of the steps have changed or evolved. There's no guarantee the directions will work perfectly for you, but lots of smart, positive reader feedback has already improved them immensely, and they should work for you.
Update: These instructions were revised on August 6 to work around any possible removal of WGA Validation, which is needed to download optional programs and non-security updates from Windows Update or Microsoft Update. To make a System Restore point, open the Start menu, choose Run, copy and paste this line into the Run field, and press Enter:. I've tested RemoveWGA 1. Open the Folder Options Control Panel. Click the View tab. Remove the check, if any, beside "Hide extensions for known file types.
Note: If children or computer novices use your computer, you'll want to reverse these steps later. The next step is to search your entire system boot drive for any file containing the letters "wga".
To do that, open the Start menu and Choose Search. You will need to configure Search so that it searches system folders, searches hidden files and folders, and searches subfolders. You may well have several other search results, and we'll come back to those later. Note: You can delete these files after a subsequent reboot if you prefer. At this point, WGA Notifications is disabled.
You could stop here if you'd rather not go all the way down this path. Open the Start menu, choose Run, type "regedit" without the quotation marks, and press Enter.
This opens the Registry Editor. Locate and delete the last subkeys folders in these locations in the Registry. Then just delete that folder. Repeat for the other Registry subkey, WgaNotify. That ends Microsoft's initial instructions.
On my computers, I reboot my computer and remove the following subkeys as well. You should not attempt to remove every instance of WGA in the Registry. The next step is to delete other WGA Notifications files returned in your search. It's not absolutely essential for you to remove every last trace of WGA Notifications, especially when that attempt could very likely get you into trouble. For example, wgaapi. I haven't tried any of the suggestions and don't want to get into a situation where I need to.
Thanks for the link. Sounds like a lot of trouble, and you are wise to just not install this unnecessary WGAN in the first place. I don't use automatic updates, so I don't have your problem. I don't in general recommend disabling automatic updates, but that is one sure way to get rid of that nag.
On the other hand, I am obsessive about regularly checking for security updates at Microsoft Updates , and I always use the Custom not the Express option, which allows me to hide updates I don't want, such as WGAN. Most folks don't want the hassle of this manual approach. I don't know if the following still works with Automatic Updates enabled, but it's worth a try: Use "Notify me but do not download or install" in the Auto Update options.
You will be asked if you want the update to be hidden from future notifications. Click on Yes. Thanks, Joe. Y'know, I've been a geek at one time or another in my career, and I tried to read every update description and make sense of it all. Microsoft has employees well, maybe only 3, this week whose sole job is to write obscure descriptions for their fixes that require specialized knowledge to understand.
I simply don't have the time for it anymore. Automatic updates, express installation and blind acceptance are good enough I don't think my reboot option screen is related to automatic update, however, because my updates aren't scheduled to run on reboot, only at a fixed time in the wee hours of the morning.
The popup is part of the boot sequence, and If I knew more about that and where it were coming from I suspect I could comment it out of whatever bat file or other script runs on reboot; but I don't know how all of that works and i don't feel like studying it. Sorry this has been so involved. I may have solved this unfortunately, "solved" does not imply "resolved". I do have , and my system indicates it was installed last November that might even have been a deliberate, if misinformed, decision; I don't typically track that kind of stuff.
I suspect SP3 "awakened" in my system; since it's not in yours and you said you have SP3 but don't see the popup, that makes sense. As advertised, is non-removable. I have not activated WGAN. It's easier to cancel the request to do so each time I reboot than to say "yes" and spend the next six months, in case I'm for any reason not kosher, trying to figure out how to get it to stop nagging every time I start an app.
It's a pain because with my desktop safely in my office in my house, I bypass login checking. I used to be able to trigger a restart and go brew nyself a cup of tea and return to a fully started machine. Now i return to a popup I need to cancel. Ah, well, life can be rough. Browse Community.
Turn on suggestions. Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type. Showing results for. Search instead for. The Windows validation is required to make sure that customers have access to the latest features, updates, and support from Microsoft. Additionally, you will receive information about how to obtain genuine Windows software. The validation process applies to all Windows Vista editions.
This includes the following editions:. To validate your Windows Vista software, visit the following Web site, and then click Validate Windows :. Need more help? Expand your skills.
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