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Win 11 Watermark - workaround

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oldgeek

Well-Known Member
Aug 25, 2021
68
33
Coutesy of The Verge and Reviewgeek, the following registry hack has been tried and tested and seems to work.

Quote:
Remove Windows 11 Watermark

How to Remove the Windows 11 Unsupported Hardware Watermark?
Thankfully, there’s already a way to remove the Windows 11 watermark. But, whether you should do it or not is up to you. It’s important to state that removing the watermark does include editing some system registry files, which can potentially be dangerous if you make a mistake. So, do this at your own risk, and use caution.

Back up your registry!

1. Access the Registry Editor by typing ‘Regedit’ in the Windows 11 search box and hitting OK to open it.

2. On the left side, open up HKEY_CURRENT_USER and scroll down to the Control Panel
.
3. Find the entry called UnsupportedHardwareNotificationCache.

4. Right-click that entry and select ‘Modify’ from the menu.

5. Change the SV2 DWORD value from 1 to 0.

6. Save, exit, and then restart your PC.

Again, be very careful when messing around in the Regedit tool, and if you’re unsure about anything, don’t do it. If you follow the steps correctly, the watermark should disappear after your PC boots back up.

Microsoft may block this hack in the future, but for now, give it a try to get rid of that shameful watermark

OldGeek
 
Remove Windows 11 Watermark

OldGeek
Thanks, nice tip. Why not offer a batch with the solution? Give me the registry key full path...

Save as remove_watermark.bat
Code:
@echo off
:: BatchGotAdmin
:-------------------------------------
REM  --> Check for permissions
    IF "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%" EQU "amd64" (
>nul 2>&1 "%SYSTEMROOT%\SysWOW64\cacls.exe" "%SYSTEMROOT%\SysWOW64\config\system"
) ELSE (
>nul 2>&1 "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\cacls.exe" "%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\config\system"
)

REM --> If error flag set, we do not have admin.
if '%errorlevel%' NEQ '0' (
    echo Requesting administrative privileges...
    goto UACPrompt
) else ( goto gotAdmin )

:UACPrompt
    echo Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) > "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    set params= %*
    echo UAC.ShellExecute "cmd.exe", "/c ""%~s0"" %params:"=""%", "", "runas", 1 >> "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"

    "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    del "%temp%\getadmin.vbs"
    exit /B

:gotAdmin
    pushd "%CD%"
    CD /D "%~dp0"
:--------------------------------------   
@title Remove Windows 10/11 Watermark
:start
echo ...............................................................................
echo .                     Remove Windows 10/11 Watermark                          .
echo ...............................................................................
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SoftwareProtectionPlatform\Activation" /v Manual /t REG_DWORD /d "1" /f
pause
 
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