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Windows Nag Windows to Counter Piracy

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pirate-vein-rupture dept.

Vicegrip writes "Microsoft is enhancing its Genuine Advantage program in the US, Australia, UK, Malaysia and NZ to now include persistent nag screens to remind that your version of Windows is not licensed. These nag screens will keep appearing until you license your version of Windows or, presumably, convince Microsoft they've made a mistake."

3 of 548 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Or until you remove the app... by jkonrad · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, it's:

    You can use Add or Remove Programs to view Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications, but you cannot use Add or Remove Programs to remove the notifications.

    You can temporarily disable Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications. To do this, right-click the Notifier icon in the notification area and select Change Notifications Settings. Then, follow the prompts. This will disable the Notification Prompts until a new release of the Notification Update is released.

  2. That was easy. by drwiii · · Score: 5, Informative
    If you think Windows starts up slowly enough as it is, you can disable WGA by removing the execute bit on WgaLogon.dll. That way, winlogon can't call it as a notification package at boot, and since WgaLogon is responsible for running and maintaining WgaTray.exe, no more tray popups either.

    And since the read bit is still there, you won't trip Windows Update to force you to reinstall it; the DLL still matches with the WU catalog and all the WGA registry keys are still in place.

  3. Re:How? (was Re:That was easy.) by drwiii · · Score: 5, Informative
    If you're not familiar with how NT ACLs work, here's how you can break file permission inheritance. First of all, let's make sure Windows will let you access the ACL dialog from the GUI:

    • In explorer, go to Tools > Folder Options. Then, go to View > Advanced Settings and uncheck "Use simple file sharing". Hit OK.

    Now, let's change the permissions for WgaLogon:

    • In the Address bar, type (without quotes) "%WinDir%\system32" and hit enter.

    • Scroll down to WgaLogon.dll, right click on it, pick Properties. Go to Security.

    • Hit the Advanced button, uncheck the Inherit box at the bottom, hit the Copy button, then hit OK.

    Now we have a local copy of the ACL which we can modify.

    • Go through each listed user/group and remove the "Read & Execute" permission for that file, leaving the "Read" permission as-is.

    • Hit OK to apply the permission changes and close the file properties dialog. Restart the machine.

    You can now turn "Use simple file sharing" back on, if you want.