Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA)-How to Uninstall and Remove permanently

If you are tired of Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage notification continually showing up on your PC screen and looking for ways as to how to uninstall and remove Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) permanently from your PC, then you have hit upon the right article. In this post I am going to provide you step by step Windows Genuine Advantage removal procedure that you can implement right away. However, before I give you the removal plan let me first explain what Windows Genuine Advantage Notification is.

What is Windows Genuine Advantage Notification?

Windows Genuine Advantage is a program created by Microsoft that makes online validation obligatory for some of the recent Microsoft products. It is an anti-piracy program that is automatically installed if Windows Automatic Updates are enabled. If you go to the Windows Update site, it will ask you for installing this validation tool before you can select the updates from the Microsoft update website. By accepting to install this validation tool, an ActiveX component in internet Explorer is installed to check validation of the Windows license. If, for some reason, this tool fails to validate your Windows, then it’ll always show you a warning that you may be a victim of software counterfeiting and that your Windows is not genuine. It will show up on your logon screen and make you wait for some seconds. And when you logon, it will appear in your status bar and will keep annoying you. WGA Notifications covers Windows XP, Windows Vista and current versions of Windows7.

How to Uninstall and Remove Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA)?

Here is a step by step guide on how to remove Windows Genuine Advantage notification manually:

1) Go to the Start Menu and click on Run;

2) Type ‘system32’ (without quotes) in the box and click ok;

3) Click on the ‘Tools’ tab at the top of the ‘system32’ window. Then click on the ‘Folder Options’ in the drop-down menu and then click on ‘View’;

4) Click to un-check the box beside "Hide extensions for known file types", click on ‘Apply’ and then click on ‘OK’ ;

5) Find the file ‘WgaLogon.dll’ and rename it with an extension. For example you can rename the file as ‘WgaLogon1.dll’ or ‘WgaLogon.dll1’. When you see a message warning you against the change of name of the file, click on ‘yes’;

6) Now go to ‘system32’ window again, locate and delete the ‘WgaTray.exe’ file and instantly open the ‘Task Manager’ window to end 'WgaTray.exe' ( Be quick enough while removing the ‘WgaTray.exe’ file as the program will pop up again within seconds after you end it);

7) Click on the "Processes" tab, select ‘WgaTray.exe’ and click on the "End Process" button;

8) Now go back to ‘System32’ window and remove the extension you gave to ‘WgaLogon.dll’. For example, if you renamed the file as WgaLogon1.dll, then change it back to ‘WgaLogon.dll’;

9) Reboot the computer to let the change take place;

By following the above steps you should be able to remove Windows Genuine Advantage from your PC.

While it is recommended to follow first the above manual process in order to remove Windows Genuine Advantage from your PC, nevertheless, if you find it difficult to comprehend how to uninstall and remove Windows Genuine Advantage by following the above steps or for some reason if this fails to work you need not worry. Several good Windows Genuine Advantage removal software are there to do the thing for you automatically. ‘Perfect uninstaller’ is one of such program, which can automatically perform the removal process reliably. This free software helps you to uninstall and remove Windows Genuine Advantage permanently by following three simple steps. Firstly, it will uninstall the program from the PC, then it will scan the registry and the hard-drive thoroughly to find any leftover files related to the program and lastly it will remove all traces of these files.When you manually try to remove the program it can not always be guaranteed that you will be able to completely remove Windows Genuine Advantage from your PC along with all the left over files related to the program. This is because when doing it manually, you really can’t force a complete uninstall by scanning all the areas of the computer including the registry, which can only be done by an ‘uninstaller software’. It is, therefore, highly recommended that for complete removal of Windows Genuine Advantage including all related files from your PC you should take help of a powerful uninstaller like ‘Perfect uninstaller’. Other notable software for this purpose includes ‘WGARemover’ and ‘MUBlinder’.

Once the process to fully uninstall and remove Windows Genuine Advantage from your PC is completed, I would recommend you to change your preference for 'Automatic Updates' in Control Panel so that WGA notification doesn’t make its way back onto your system. For this you may follow the following steps:

Go to Control Panel > Security Center > Automatic Update Settings;

Select ‘Notify me but don’t automatically download or install them’;

Click Ok;

Click on the ‘Windows Updates’ icon;

Unselect the box beside ‘Windows Genuine Advantage Notification Tool’;

Click on Download;

Next time make it sure that you check the list of downloads so that you do not install again any new version of Windows Genuine Advantage on your PC;