Windows 7 – Removing Watermark (RC Build 7100) September 15th, 2009
The Release Candidate (RC) of Windows 7 is now widely used by many. The RC is of course fully functional and is in essence, the same version as the full release which is due to hit the shops next month on October 22nd. The RC will expire on June 1st, 2010 but on March 1st, it will start coercing you to upgrade to the full product by shutting down every two hours (but remain fully functional, you’ll just have to turn it back on). Still, that gives us around 7 months grace before we have to bite the bullet and uninstall the RC before installation the public release.
So just how much time does it take to backup all of your data and system settings and reinstate everything back after a fresh install? I know personally I always seem to forget at least a couple of things so try and avoid it as long as possible. Experience tells me that when it’s time for me to do it, I’d best not make any plans for the rest of the day; at least. Let’s be honest, it’s a real pain.
So, establishing that we are likely to keep the RC on our machines for some time before upgrading, I wanted to make the experience as nice as possible and one thing that has annoyed for ever since the install is the watermark which Microsoft place above the system tray. You know the one, the annoying ‘For Testing Purposes Only’ (yeah right…) which sits just in the wrong place and ruins my nice clutter free desktop.
Now, wanting to remove the watermark isn’t something new and not wanting to ‘reinvent the wheel’ I thought I’d research some of the ways others have achieved this. Firstly, let me say there is more than one correct way of doing this, the theory behind what needs to be done is simple enough and it doesn’t really matter which way you decide to go. I have a bit of time on my hands this week as I am away on holiday (but obviously, couldn’t contemplate leaving my laptop at home..) so went about it the long way by manipulating a .mui file in the windowssystems32en-us folder, but, there is a much simpler way which I thought I’d share with you all.
Download this file to somewhere you’ll easily remember, I find the desktop is usually the easiest. Unzip the file and choose either the 32bit or 64bit version depending on which you have installed then right click the file as select run as administrator. The script will then go through the process of removing the watermark without you having to edit any of the core files yourself, the entire process is pretty quick and should not take any more than a minute or so.
That’s it!
One thing to mention here, the file is only tested with Build 7100 (the latest RC), it will not work with earlier builds, such as the earlier betas.
Whilst I prefered the manual way of doing things, most I’m sure will opt for the easier, automatic way. Credit goes to deepxw for coding the file to automatically remove the watermark.
Tags: watermark, windows 7
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Blah, Microsoft, Technology Related, Windows 7. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
