Windows Genuine Advantage - how do I make it go away?

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Help me please. Every time I turn on my laptop a window appears trying to make me load a program called Windows Genuine Advantage. I don't want to load it, so I click 'Cancel'. But this happens every time I turn on my laptop, for months now! I just want the damn thing to go away. I am very suspicious of this sort of thing - why would they need to call it 'Genuine advantage' if it really was one?

How can I make it go away forever?

Windows Genuine Advantage is a genuine piece of Microsoft Software that is a response to people stealing from them.

Basically it wants to call home to Microsoft and check that your copy of Windows is genuine.

However there is a chance that something might be pretending to be WGA, so to be sure I'd download a malware checker (such as this one www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php) and check that your machine is clean.

If it is then running WGA is something that's worth going through.

Thanks Badger, but I have a strong and seething resentment towards Microsoft trying to tell me what to do. What you describe is exactly what I thought the program is for, but why should I be forced to do this?

There is nothing wrong with my software - it is all genuine. But I am worried this program will do something stupid. e.g. a few months ago my hard drive crashed and I sent the laptop back to the seller (a large corporate seller of reconditioned ex lease laptops - totally professional etc). They kindly put a new hard drive in and tried to recover and reload what was there. I can just imagine that a program like WGA will find something it doesn't like about this, and cause problems for me. Surely I can make it just go away. I paid fairly and squarely for the software. This seems to be about helping Microsoft, not helping me.

Anyone know how to stop it popping up?

My work PC did that for ages last year, but with the new year, they've given up trying to get me to click on it!

I would never have clicked either...

Well you're not forced to use Windows...

If you don't agree to the WGA stuff then you can't download Windows Updates other than critical fixes. Oh and you also have to put up with the nagging.

If you google around there are instructions out there for how to remove it which depend upon which version of Windows you've got.

Personally I'd let it do it's thing and then if you have trouble in the future deal with it then and there.

People stealing things like games, music of software is a bad thing.

However this sort of copy protection, like those ads on the front of DVDs, really only seems to annoy honest people while the genuine pirates just strip it all away.

I can understand why they do it.

But it does annoy me.

How exactly is "Windows Genuine Advantage" an "advantage" to me, the consumer?

When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley sinks?

Windows Genuine Advantage? A contradiction in terms surely?

You really don't have to put up with their bullying. You may think all the world is a slave to Microsoft but it's not true. Ask any Mac convert.

Try it, you may like it.

www.apple.com/support/switch101/

At the risk of reigniting operating system wars, Apple are just as control freaky as Microsoft, they just have more sense of style

If real freedom is the goal you need Linux or one of the BSD variants. If you just want to reduce the level of MS annoyance, switching to Mac ain't necessarily a bad choice.