What is RemoveWGA?

RemoveWGA enables you to remove the Microsoft "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" tool, which is calling home and connect to Microsoft servers every time you boot (pilot version), or every two weeks (current release). Once the WGA Notification tool has checked your OS and has confirmed you had a legit copy, there is no decent point or reason to check it again and again every boot. Moreover, connecting to Microsoft brings security issue for corporate networks, and privacy issues for everyone. It is also unclear which information are transmitted (Microsoft published an official answer, but an individual study brought some questions). All of that, along the fact that Microsoft used deceptive ways to make you install this tool (it was told you it was an urgent security update, whereas it is a new installation giving you no extra security) makes me calling this tool a spyware. Also, Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications is different than Windows Genuine Advantage Validation. RemoveWGA only remove the notification part, phoning home, and does not touch the Validation part. As the time I'm writting this, the Validation part is mandatory for some not critical downloads from Microsoft, but the Notification part is not mandatory at all, and you are able to install all of the security updates without installing this one. This may change in the future thought, I don't know what are the Microsoft plans. Note : once the WGA notification is removed, the Automatic Update will bug you about installing the update again. This is normal, and out of the scope of RemoveWGA (since at this point, the WGA notification is uninstalled from your system). If you are concerned about tweaking Automatic Update to prevent Microsoft trying to push the update on your computer, read this page

Download

Link : removewga_forbidden Size : 13.5 KB MD5 : 3B6A1F6AD4B8141B1AED8644D789706F SHA-1 : 8DA3BF220F6853D9B742706DCE4EF39212E39243 Compatible : Windows XP (SP1/SP2) (from many reports, the WGA notification does not install on Win2K/2K3. But it costs nothing to check yourself)

Features

* Tell you if the WGA notification tool is active on your system * Allows you to remove the WGA notification tool from your system * Accept the "-silent" command line parameter to silently check if the WGA notification tool is active on your system, and popup only if it is found (usefull for checking automatically at startup for instance)

Known issues

1 - One user which had a particular patched "uxtheme.dll" (to allow applying custom WinXP themes) wasn't able to run the tool. I had only one report like this, moreover the patched DLLs (uxtheme.dll) I have tested do not conflict. Anyway just in case, there is version with the WinXP theme style support disabled : removewga_forbidden 2 - If RemoveWGA is blocked/intercepted by another security application, it may prevent it to run completly fine until the end, and it may kill it. If a security application popups about RemoveWGA, you must allow it in order to remove the WGA notification part.

Awards

100% CLEAN award granted by Softpedia

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