Posted on Thursday 16 April 2009
There are a couple of great articles which thoroughly explore how to remove the Windows Genuine Advantage Notification popups that appear, including this one.
However, i couldn’t find anything to help you remove the wgasetup file, the Windows Genuine Advantage Notification Installer when it has been downloaded but not installed.
To do so, follow these steps:
- Reboot in safe mode (press F8 repeatedly on restart)
- Search for wga* to find all files with wga in the filename. Remove wgasetup.exe file – probably located in C:\Windows\Prefetch
- Restart and enjoy.
Please note this post is not intended to help people copy Microsoft software and this website does not support such behaviour. 
Why not?
Awesome !! Worked perfectly. Thanks.
omg thank you! thank you! I have been getting harassed by this file every time I boot up!
I tried to delete the wgasetup.exe file in safe mode, but it comes back after restart. Any help ?
Nope, that didn’t do it.
@Bodie: Did you find the wgasetup file? Are you sure the installer has not run and that WGA is installed on your computer.
The course outlined above is specifically if WGA has not been installed. If you delete the installer, it cannot install.
@Dave: OK. What did you try, what are your symptoms?
Theres a WGASETUPEXE.xxxxx.PF file also. (xxx was different on my and my friends machine) What’s that do?
After I smoked it, WGASEUP.EXE stopped reappearing.
That helped!
I do have a Genuine XP installation, in fact like most people, have 3 computers and 7 Windows licenses. But I kept getting the Blue screen since Microsoft is trying to insist I install this spyware.
Thanks so much for the tip. This thing has been causing intermittent boot problems for while. For those who don’t see the file in the windows\prefetch folder try looking in the windows\tasks folder. That’s where I found the wgasetup.exe file.
Thanks so much for this simple fix! I’ve looked everywhere for a solution to this problem and yours was a) the simplest, and b) worked!!!
Thanks for your assistance!
You can do a search and delete the file if it is not installed & you can unistall it if it is installed !
Try this step if it has already been installed -
Find the WGA files
CTRL+click on all these files(to select them)
Then press delete
It will ask -’Are you sure’&yes/no
dont press anything
PressCTRL+ALT+Delete
Tsk manager will come
Take processes & then terminate the 2 wga processes
Then quickly take the message which came when you partially deleted the WGA file & Press Yes & quickly empty the recycle bin !!
(Do it fast or the WGA will recover itself !!!!!
For doubts mail me @ –> Eonhari@yahoo.in
Great! Thanks for sharing this one Fergy and I’ll also try Eonhari
Thanks it worked!!!!……other sites describes what to do aftre wga is installed….but i needed this before wga is installed…
You can remove it through Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Scheduled Tasks then just delete the wgasetup.job task.
In my case, ive already run thru till the end of that process as i had no idea.
Will it also be deleted when i follow the above mentioned steps?
Secondly, am not an IT Tech, can you pliz help me thru the Step by step process?
Since Windows installer has screwed me over so many times installing gunk that sometimes makes things worse than helpful, I always make it a point to screen through the programs that it wants to install. The moment i saw this ‘genuine program’ crap, I knew it was to provide not me, but microsoft the peace of mind, which I don’t give 2 cents about.
Luckily there’s this handy thing called the internet and helpful people who post such things, so I’ve successfully removed this irritating installer notification. To make a complete removal, I did what was suggested by Fergy as well as Gigi’s advice:
[Gigi 7 April 2010 | 4:10 pm
You can remove it through Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Scheduled Tasks then just delete the wgasetup.job task.]
But please make sure to go to task manager to completely remove any active processes of wga before trying to delete the files in prefetch and job task. Afterward, please empty trash can to rid yourself of that pest.
I did not do the above in safe mode: too lazy. But it worked anyway.
I was too lazy
The solution given by
Gigi is perfect and simple. many many Thanks. Keep booting ….