How to Remove Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications
Method One: Task Manager
Run as an administrator with no other user
accounts running.
Launch Windows Task Manager (Processes). Leave it open.
Navigate to to C:\Windows\System32, and find WgaTray.exe.
Right-click on WgaTray.exe, and select Delete. Leave the deletion
confirmation box open.go back to Windows Task Manager and click Wgatray.exe.
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.
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). You’ll 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
10
Delete the folder WgaLogon and all its
contents.
11
Reboot Windows XP.
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 don’t 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 won’t 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 don’t want.
·
Select “Don’t notify
me about these updates again”, so that they will be ignored every time updates
are downloaded.
Method Two: Command Delete
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.
Open a Command Prompt window. Click on Start, then Run. Type CMD and press
OK.
Change Directory into the System32 Folder. Type "cd \windows\system32"
(without quotation marks).
Open Notepad window. Type the following lines:
taskkill -IM wgatray.exe
del wgatray.exe
del wgalogon.old
taskkill -IM wgatray.exe
del wgatray.exe
del wgalogon.old
Highlight and copy the three lines above to
the Clipboard.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.
Method Three: 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.
Paste the following lines into Notepad, then
save and exit:
taskkill -IM wgatray.exe
del wgatray.exe
del wgalogon.old4
taskkill -IM wgatray.exe
del wgatray.exe
del wgalogon.old4
Double-click on the remove.bat icon. A command prompt window should
briefly appear, then close automatically.
Method Four: System Tools
Open System32 by either of the following
methods:
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.
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.
Find WgaLogon.dll. Rename it "WgaLogon.dll.bak"
(without quotes).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Method Five: Renaming
Open a Command window. Click on Start, then Run. Type CMD and click
OK.
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
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
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.
Select all the text (Ctrl-A) and copy to the
clipboard (Ctrl-C).
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