How in the Tech

Kill Program Compatibility Assistant in Vista and Win 7

By Adam Myers ⋅ December 2, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Annoyances, Windows

Program Compatibility Assistant is a tool introduced in Windows Vista and still exists in 7. Without much detail, PCA monitors the installation of software for known compatibility issues and warns the user of any potential problems. As a result, it is a very handy feature for novice users but for the power user, it’s just another annoyance and a layer they must dig through to accomplish a simple task. You may have seen the dialog pop-up for Program Compatibility Assistant like below, but in my experience, even with the warnings the software installed cleanly and correctly, leaving no noticeable issues when used. If you feel you can do without PCA, it’s pretty simple to disable the service.

Click Start and type services.msc in the search box. This launches the Windows Services Manager.

Scroll through the list of system services until you find Program Compatibility Assistant Service. Double-click on it.

On the service properties dialog we want to change the Startup type from Automatic to Disabled. The service will not start automatically upon each reboot.

Even though the service is now Disabled, it is still running until you either reboot the computer or click the Stop button in this same dialog. Click Stop and then OK out of the dialog.

If you ever wish to re-enable PCA just revert step 3 back to Automatic.