Stopping Windows Genuine Advantage dead in its tracks- and still getting the updates

{[someone posted this and thought i would share it with you, its located here] or read it bellow}

As a disclaimer: I run a legitimate copy of Windows XP. It came pre-installed on my IBM Lenovo ThinkPad T42p. I am not advocating piracy or anything else that may or may not be illegal. All I am doing is showing you how to save yourself a few precious spaces in your RAM as well as stop your machine from calling home into Microsoft every 14 days.

All this said… here goes:

I ran my weekly Windows Update and it wanted to install the ‘Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool (KB892130)’ hotfix. I HAD to install it, otherwise I wouldn’t get any updates to my machine.

So, I accept it, go through the install, but once it was done, I didn’t reboot. Instead, I went into: C:\WINDOWS\SOFTWAREDISTRIBUTION\DOWNLOAD\ and located a folder (mine was:
CD6812FEF1FD3E79D9350B24A76108F1; yours may vary) and that folder contained the following files:

legitcheckcontrol.dll
spmsg.dll
update/
4 _downloadprogress_.state
17 _file_to_execute_.txt
34 _unpacked_.state
50 _useselfcontained_.state

the update directory contained:

update.exe
update.inf
update.ver
updspapi.dll
wga.cat
wgacustom.dll

All you have to do now is move (my preferred method, in case I have to put it back) or delete the CD6812FEF1FD3E79D9350B24A76108F1 directory, and restart.

WGA doesn’t finish its install, but from Windows Update’s point of view, it’s all good.

There you go… have fun, and be safe!

[originating url]