Win7 Beta – Remove the Send Feedback Link on Every Window

I’m knee deep in setting up my Lenovo X60 Tablet with Windows 7 and my initial impressions are extremely positive. The fact that all the drivers for my laptop were in the install except for the fingerprint reader and the ACPI power management driver nearly made me giddy. I was thrilled that I didn’t have to use any of those icky drivers from Lenovo. Microsoft tests the drivers in the Windows install far better than any of the vendors and doesn’t install extra crud except the drivers themselves. After I get everything installed and live with the machine for a while, I’ll write up a more in depth report about Windows 7.

One minor problem I encountered was the unfortunate placement of the Send Feedback link that appears on any window next to the minimize button. You can see it below in the new Calculator in Scientific mode.

Having accidentally clicked on that link over two hundred times now, I figured there had to be a way to turn it off. A quick look in the registry got me to the HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl PanelDesktop key and in there is a DWORD value, FeedbackToolEnabled set to the default of 3. If you change it to 0 and log out, you’ll now have your normal title bar back when you log back in. Just to prove the registry key hack works, here’s calculator in the new Programmer mode.

Please don’t take this as an invitation to avoid giving feedback to the Windows team! Keep the Feedback tool on your desktop so you can tell Microsoft what you are finding wrong and offer suggestions for improvement. There’s a lot to like in Windows 7, I really encourage you to give it an install!