Some of you may find this useful. You may need to use one or more of these methods to disable that annoying Windoze anti-piracy check. For educational purposes only, of course!
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]This week, Microsoft started requiring users to verifiy their serial number before using Windows Update. This effort to force users to either buy XP or tell them where you got the illegal copy is called "Windows Genuine Advantage" AKA "WGA". Examples of popular applications covered under the Genuine Advantage program include Windows Media Player, DirectX for gaming and the new Windows anti-spyware products. You may get this message in error even though your copy of Windows is legal andf legitimate. Here's how to disable the WGA check...
[ol][li]Start in safe mode and find the file /WINDOWS/System32/WgaLogon.dll. [/li][li]Edit the file properties and remove the execute and write permissions for all users including System. [/li][/ol]The daily checkin and the WGA System Tray tool are both started from this DLL so making it non-executable kills the whole WGA Notification system. Making it read-only stops windows update from 'repairing it' and installing future versions.
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Another method:
If you want to be able to disable the Genuine Windows Advantage Add-on for IE (accessible via Tools|Manage Add-ons... in IE), you might be surprised (or not) to see that Microsoft will not let you do so. It gives you some sort of stupid "disabled by Administrator" message, even when you're logged on as Administrator (I guess MS thinks it's the administrator for your computer).
To enable the radio button that allows you to disable this worthless add-on, follow these instructions I found:
1. Open Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Security Features > Add-on Management.
2. Double click Add-on List and select enabled.
3. Click on Show then on Add.
4. In enter name put (17492023-C23A-453E-A040-C7C580BBF700) .
5. In enter value put 2.
6. OK, Apply, OK.
7. Now you can disable/enable the add-on.
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How to bypass and disable the Genuine Windows Validation Check (from http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/03/07/bypass-an d-disable-genuine-windows-validation-check/ [mydigitallife.info]):
1. Open Windows Explorer by clicking Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Windows Explorer.
2. Browse to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Windows Genuine Advantage\data folder.
3. Delete (or backup or move to another folder, if you want) data.dat file.
4. Create a new empty data.dat: You can create a new text file by (make sure you are at the right folder at above) clicking File -> New -> Text Document or right clicking on Windows Explorer window then click New -> Text Document. Then, either rename the file to data.dat. The original .txt extention of the text file need to be changed too. You can disable the hiding of extension of known file types, or follow the following steps to create a new file out of the text file:
* Open the text document you just created.
* Click on File -> Save As.
* Change the Save as type to "All Files".
* In the File name, type data.dat
* Click Save.
* Go back to the Windows Explorer, at folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Windows Genuine Advantage\data, check that data.dat exists.
* Delete the text file you created previously.
5. Set the attributes of data.dat to Hidden and Read-Only. Attributes can be set by right click on the data.dat file, and then click on Properties.
6. Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation check has been disabled.
Note: The data.dat that are replacing the original data.dat can be blank text file or empty, or you may type whatever you want there.
With this hack (or crack if you want), Windows WGA piracy check will be bypassed and you can now download software from Download Center or apply updates from Microsoft/Windows Updates.
