How in the Tech

Silencing the generally non-helpful Program Compatibility warning pop-up

By Adam Myers ⋅ July 20, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Annoyances, Windows 7

The Program Compatibility Assistant is a new feature introduced in Windows 7 that arguably provides more annoyance than it does benefit – at least in my experience. The Program Compatibility Assistant provides a dialog warning if compatibility issues are detected during an installation or execution of a program. Generally the user is prompted for one of two options: reinstall the software using the recommended settings or confirming that the software did in fact install correctly. In the case of retrying with recommended settings – it usually just attempts to make changes to the programs compatibility settings, such as trying the install as if it were occurring under Windows XP SP3, instead of 7. It may also adjust User Account Control to achieve the desired effect – the software installing without throwing any warnings to the operating system.

Users of Windows 7 who’ve installed just a handful of software have likely already encountered the rather jarring warning dialog. If you react like most, you think to yourself gee that’s interesting and click through the message; usually instructing Windows that the software appeared to install just fine to your eyes! As you might expect, as I’m constantly looking at new and interesting software I come across this message often. In my experience, selecting either of the two options doesn’t actually fix any problem that may have occurred, and in all actuality, the software tends to just work without any intervention – making the warning dialog effectively worthless!

If you are questioning what value the dialog then provides to you – you will be interested in the manner to disable the feature altogether. The messages are generated by a Windows service aptly titled Program Compatibility Assistant Service.

Access the Windows Services control program by executing the command services.msc from the Start Search box.

Scroll down until you’ve located the Program Compatibility Assistant Service.

Double-click on the service to open it’s Properties dialog. You can Stop the service by clicking the appropriate button and if you wish to prevent the service from restart on the next reboot, change it’s Startup type to Disabled.