10 Ways to Remove Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-Windows-Genuine-Advantage-Notif...

How to Remove Windows Genuine

Advantage Notifications
Ten Methods: Using Command Script Linux Task Manager Command Delete
Executing a Batch Script System Tools Renaming Renaming (Graphical Interface by selection)
Alternative Stopping a Service

Windows Genuine Advantage (W GA) notifications occur when your computer

hasn't passed the validation test. The validation test can be failed because
you installed a pirated non-genuine copy of 7, or because you have changed
your 7 product key to a software-generated key, or sometimes it just happens
for no reason at all. However, you can easily get rid of these annoying
notifications yourself.
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Method 1 of 10: Using Command Script

1 Open Command Prompt as administrator in start menu > all programs

>accessories >command prompt . Right click on command prompt and select
run as administrator

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2 Type "SLMGR/REARM" (without quotes) and enter

3 Restart Windows

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Method 2 of 10: Linux

1 Boot the computer using Linux on a CD or USB drive.

Navigate to the System32 folder in the Windows folder.

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3 Delete or rename two items: WgaTray.exe and WgaTray.dll.

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Method 3 of 10: Task Manager

1 Run as an administrator with no other user accounts running.

2 Launch Windows Task Manager (Processes). Leave it open.

3 Navigate to to C:\Windows\System32, and find WgaTray.exe.

4 Right-click on WgaTray.exe, and select Delete. Leave the deletion confirmation

box open.

5 Go back to Windows Task Manager and click Wgatray.exe.

6 Click End Process. When you are prompted for a confirmation to terminate the
process, align the End Process confirmation box with the previous Delete File
confirmation box, or at least have them close together. Do this because you'll need to
do both actions quickly at least within 2 or 3 seconds.

7 Click Yes in both boxes, quickly. Click on Yes on the Task Manager prompt (to
end the process) and then quickly press Yes on the deletion confirmation (to
delete the actual file). Youll need to repeat this if you miss it.

8 Launch the Registry Editor. Click Start, then Run, and enter regedit.

9 Browse to the following location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE

\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify

Delete the folder WgaLogon and all its contents.

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10

11 Reboot Windows 7.

12 Check your work. As a precaution, after you have followed the above
instructions:
Go to Control Panel > Security Center > Automatic Update Settings.
Select the third option, Notify me but dont automatically download or install
them."
Click OK.
The next time the Windows Updates icon appears in the system tray, click on
the icon and it will display a list of available updates. Windows wont
automatically download and install them anymore.
If Windows Genuine Advantage Notification Tool is there, uncheck it and
press enter to download everything else (if you want to). You can right-click to
hide updates that you dont want.
Select Dont notify me about these updates again, so that they will be ignored
every time updates are downloaded.
Just remember, from now on, make sure to check the list of downloads so that
you dont install any new versions of this tool.

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Method 4 of 10: Command Delete

1 Try system restore first. If you have only just installed Windows Genuine
Advantage notifications, simply using the system restore function will remove the
program. Then refuse to accept the WGA update next time Windows updates.
Otherwise, proceed as detailed below.

2 Open a Command Prompt window. Click on Start, then Run. Type CMD and
press OK.

3 Change Directory into the System32 Folder. Type "cd \windows\system32"

(without quotation marks).

4 Open Notepad window. Type the following lines:

taskkill -IM wgatray.exe

del wgatray.exe

del wgalogon.old

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5 Highlight and copy the three lines above to the Clipboard.

6 Paste the contents of the Clipboard to Command Prompt. This should kill the
wgatray.exe process from the Taskbar and immediately delete both files
wgatray.exe and wgalogon.dll.

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Method 5 of 10: Executing a Batch Script

1 Right-click on your desktop. Choose New, then Text Document.

Enter the name as "remove.bat" without the quotes.

A message should appear saying that you are changing a file type. Click Yes. If
the message does not appear, and the file icon is a picture of a piece of paper,
then you need to enable "show file extensions for known file types" in the
Windows Explorer Tools ->Folder Options dialog.

2 Right-click on remove.bat and select Edit. Notepad will open.

3 Paste the following lines into Notepad, then save and exit:

taskkill -IM wgatray.exe

del wgatray.exe

del wgalogon.old

4 Double-click on the remove.bat icon. A command prompt window should briefly

appear, then close automatically.

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Method 6 of 10: System Tools

1 Open System32 by either of the following methods:

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Click Start, then Run. Type "system32" (without quotes), and click OK.
Find system32 manually by clicking Start, My Computer, (C:) (or whatever your
drive letter is), WINDOWS, then system32.

2 Hide extensions. In system32, go to Tools, then Folder options. Click on the tab,
View, and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types" if it is not already.

3 Check to make sure the window that comes up has a full screen of various
files. The files are in alphabetical order, which makes it easier to locate the
specific file.

4 Find WgaLogon.dll. Rename it "WgaLogon.dll.bak" (without quotes).

5 Create an empty copy of WgaLogon.dll.

Right click on a blank space in system32 and select New, then Text Document.
Leave the text document empty and label it "WgaLogon.dll" (without quotes).
Press Enter (on your keyboard).
You may get a warning from the above step that says, "If you change a file
name extension, the file may become unusable. Are you sure you want to
change it?" Click Yes on this warning.

6 Be ready to complete the next two steps very quickly.

Find WgaTray.exe in system32 and delete it.

You will then have 5 seconds to find WgaTray.exe in the Task Manager.
Note that if you remove the files mentioned above while you are in Safe Mode,
the next step is unnecessary.

7 Immediately open Task Manager. You can do this three different ways:

Press Ctrl, Shift, and Esc simultaneously.

Press Ctrl, Alt, and Delete simultaneously.
Right click the Taskbar and select Task Manager.

8 Click on the process tab and select WgaTray.exe. Click on End Process.

Note that if you take longer, do not panic! All that will happen is that
WgaTray.exe will keep reappearing in the processes list (i.e. you won't be able
to delete it as required). To remove the notifications after this, return to
system32. You will find two files:WgaLogon.dll.bak (the one you renamed) and
an Application Extension (0KB) called WgaLogon.dll. Delete the Application
Extension, rename WgaLogon.dll.bak to WgaLogon.dll and repeat the process
at a greater speed, from deleting WgaTray.exe from system32.

9 Restart your computer when finished. All the notification messages should be
gone.

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Method 7 of 10: Renaming

1 Open a Command window. Click on Start, then Run. Type CMD and click OK.

2 Open Notepad. Click Start, then Run, and type NOTEPAD. Click OK.

3 Type or copy the following lines into the Notepad window:

CD %systemroot%\system32

rename wgatray.exe wgatray.exe.bak

rename wgalogon.old wgalogon.old.bak

rename LegitCheckControl.dll LegitCheckControl.dll.bak

taskkill /F /T /IM wgatray.exe

del wgatray.exe.bak

del wgalogon.old.bak

del LegitCheckControl.old.bak

4 Leave a blank line. Make sure there is a blank line at the end of the text
document, right after the last line of text.

5 Select all the text (Ctrl-A) and copy to the clipboard (Ctrl-C).

6 Paste the clipboard into the CMD window. Right click and select Paste, or
Press Ctrl-V.
This should kill the wgatray.exe process and delete the files it uses.

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Method 8 of 10: Renaming (Graphical Interface by selection)

1 Select "My Computer" on an Admin account of your Windows-computer.

2 Select the Windows folder of your "Local Disk (C:)" drive.

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3 Find and select the "system32" folder.

4 Right-click "wgatray.exe" and rename this file as "wgatray.exe blocked"

(without quotations).

5 Right-Click "wgalogon.dll" and rename it as "wgalogon.dll blocked" (without

quotations).

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Method 9 of 10: Alternative

1 Launch Windows Task Manager.

2 Locate the process wgatray.exe and end it.

If you are unable to end the process then try to rename file wgatray.exe to aaa
in both c:\Windows\System32\dllcache and c:\Windows\System32 directories.

3 Type regedit in the Run box to open Registry Editor.

4 Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify key and ??

5 Delete the folder WgaLogon and all of its contents.

6 Restart the PC normally.

7 Delete the file aaa from c:\Windows\System32.

8 Delete the aaa from c:\Windows\System32\dllcache.

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Method 10 of 10: Stopping a Service

1 Open the Run dialog

2 Type in "services.msc" without the quotation marks and press OK

3 Locate SPP Notification Service

4 Right click and press Stop

5 Right click and go to Properties

6 Change the Startup type to Disabled

7 Restart your computer

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Tips

In case W gaTray.exe cannot be deleted, you need to do the following

steps: go to Task Manager, click on WgaTray.exe then End task. In the
screen that pops up do not click Yes yet. Go to System32 and delete
W gaTray.exe with SHIFT+DELETE. Do not click yes on the pop-up
screen where you are asked if you really want to delete. Now arrange
the two pop-ups very close. Very fast (within 1 second) click yes first
on the first pop-up, from Task Manager and then click yes in the
pop-up from delete. W gaTray.exe is gone. If it doesn't work (you
receive an error), try again, faster. It should work at least for
W indowsXP.
You can also rename WgaTray.exe to W gaTray.exe.bak if you can't
remove W gaTray.exe from your Taskbar. Press Ctrl+Shift+Escape to
do so.
This process will only get rid of the notifications, and will not validate
your copy of XP. It will remove the timer at the beginning of your XP log
on, the white notice on the log on screen, and the annoying yellow star
that appears in the bottom right corner of the screen.
If you don't have a genuine version of W indows, it's better to get it
because you will be eligible get non-critical updates, IE9/10/11, and
Media Player 12.
The failed validation installs three types of notifications on your
computer: one on the log in screen, one log in timer, and one balloon.
It also stops updates from Microsoft and disables your ability to install
IE11 and W indows Media Player 12. This solution can get rid of all
three notifications, even though you will still not be able to update
through Windows Update. You will not be able to download things from
Microsoft that requires a valid license either.
You will not be able to use Automatic Updates anymore; instead, you
have to manually update them. In External Links, there is a program
that will allow you to update any system, regardless of if it is genuine
or not.
If task manager processes are moving, click the title of the "image
name" row to freeze them.
If you are not using a genuine version you will still receive critical
updates.
This is not required for systems older than W indows 2000, as older
versions of W indows do not have WGA installed. This list includes
W indows 3.1, 95, 98, NT 3.51, and NT4. (W GA now installs for
W indows 2000 searching for the most commonly used pirated keys.)
If you have problems changing files in the system32 directory, you will
have to turn off System Restore. Go to "Start" -> "Control Panel" ->
"System" -> "System Restore" and check the "Turn off system restore"
check box.

Show 1 more tip

Warnings

If you modify the wrong file, you may crash your computer. This can be
resolved with a reinstall in the worst case scenario, but if you are new

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computers make sure you have a method of reinstalling without losing

your data before you attempt this. A disk image of your system partition
and keeping your data on a separate partition is the ideal way of
achieving this because of the speed of restoring an image.
Do not edit anything but what is told in system32, or it could cause
system start up failure.

Sources and Citations

W ikipedia's page about W GA

Microsoft.com KB921914 - How to disable or uninstall the pilot version
of Microsoft W indows Genuine Advantage Notifications for W indows
XP.

Article Info

Categories: Title | Windows

In other languages:

Franais: supprimer les notifications de Windows Genuine Advantage

(WGA), Espaol: eliminar las notificaciones de Windows Genuine
Advantage, Portugus: Remover as Notificaes do Windows Genuine
Advantage, Nederlands: Notificaties van Windows Genuine Advantage
verwijderen, Italiano: Rimuovere le Notifiche di Windows Genuine
Advantage, Deutsch: Windows Echtheitsbenachrichtigungen entfernen, :
Windows , : Windows Genuine Advantage
Notifications (KB905474), Bahasa Indonesia: Menghilangkan Pemberitahuan
Windows Genuine Advantage

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 5,725,960 times.

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