Getting Rid of the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Tray Crapware

This weekend I purchased a Samsung N110 netbook and slapped Windows 7 on that thing as fast as I could. The install was beautiful and recognized all the devices on the machine. Giving Windows Update a whirl, I see there are updates for the LAN hardware and the Intel Mobile Graphics 945 Express Chipset so selected those to update as well. A quick reboot later, I noticed something new in my tray, so I clicked on it and immediately recoiled at the shear ugliness below.

What the hell!? I guess Microsoft is on the verge of letting Windows Update become a crapware delivery system. The older version of the driver didn’t have this abomination with it when I installed from the Windows 7 media. Microsoft needs to tighten down its requirements to avoid this in the future. It’s bad enough that everyone already has to install the OS from scratch to get rid of the vendor crapware, but we shouldn’t have to put up with this when updating a driver.

I find it amazingly ironic that when Microsoft gave developers at the PDC laptops they had to control the entire process from BIOS on out to ensure a good experience. Additionally, if you buy a computer at one of the new Microsoft stores, it’s sold crapware free, too. Intel, you should be ashamed for putting out something this ugly, massively bloated and utterly worthless.

Why is it bloated? Because now you have three extra programs that you didn’t want or need running on your computer along with Windows Shell Extensions that put this crap in your desktop right click menu. As Intel seems to have the notebook/netbook graphics market sewn up, I know I’m not the only one wanting to get rid of this crap.

The first step is to get rid of the auto run programs. You can use the excellent AutoRuns to do that or save the following into a .REG file to delete the registry values:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun]
“IgfxTray”=-
“HotKeysCmds”=-
“Persistence”=-

To get rid of the Shell Extension, start a command shell with administrator rights and run the following commands:

regsvr32 /u c:windowssystem32igfxress.dll
regsvr32 /u C:windowssystem32igfxsrvc.dll
regsvr32 /u C:windowssystem32hccutils.dll

The standard disclaimer applies: this works great for me, but since you’re editing the registry and unregistering DLLs you want to be super careful and ensure you know what you’re doing. After doing the two steps above, log out and log back in.

Let’s all keep complaining about crapware and I’m filing a bug reports with Microsoft that Windows Update that they are delivering crapware and one with Intel for being a crapware vendor.