Microsoft is providing end users with the instructions necessary to disable or remove altogether the WGA Notifications anti-piracy mechanism from Windows XP. However, according to the Redmond company, only the pilot version of the Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications can be either rendered useless or uninstalled completely. The software giant says that the general release build of WGA Notifications will automatically remove the version deployed in the pilot program. At the end of August 2008, Microsoft made available an update to WGA Validation and WGA Notifications for Windows XP (including SP3).

 

"These instructions have not been tested on the general release version of the WGA Notifications. Therefore, these instructions are not supported. Microsoft will offer the general release version of WGA Notifications to users who uninstall the pilot version at a later date. These users will obtain the general release version through the Microsoft Automatic Update service," the company informed.

 

According to the Redmond giant, the pilot versions of WGA Notifications range from 1.5.0527.0 to 1.5.0532.2. Via Add or Remove Programs, Windows XP - Software, Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications, and "Click here for support information," users will be able to find the version data for their respective installation of WGA Notifications. In order to simply disable the anti-piracy mechanism, users will have to change the extensions of the following files: "WgaLogon" and "WgaTray" to .OLD. After the renaming process the two items should be %Windir%\system32\WgaLogon.dll to %Windir%\system32\WgaLogon.old and %Windir%\system32\WgaTray.exe to %Windir%\system32\WgaTray.old. A restart will be required in order for the process to be complete.

 

For the manual uninstalling of WGA Notifications, the same steps as above have to be followed, but in addition, users will have to "unregister LegitCheckControl.dll by using Regsvr32. To do this click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK. at the command prompt, type the following, and then press ENTER: egsvr32 %Windir%\system32\LegitCheckControl.dll /u. Restart the computer," Microsoft informed.

 

In addition, users are required to enter the following at a command prompt and hit Enter after each item: Del %Windir%\system32\wgalogon.old; Del %Windir%\system32WgaTray.old; and Del %Windir%\system32\LegitCheckControl.dll. And in order to complete the uninstallation there are two registry subkeys that will need to be deleted: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify\WgaLogon and KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\WgaNotify.