You can remove items from (or add items to) the Vista Welcome Center. If your Windows Vista machine came bundled with a bunch of pre-loaded software and trialware (as do most consumer machines) you are likely to see promotional entries in the welcome center that may be more annoying than useful - for example, if you uninstall the cure-worse-than-the-disease anti virus software or some of the other disk-filler trialware, you will probably still see lingering but non-functional items in the Welcome Center long after you uninstalled the related programs.
How do you remove these unwelcome Welcome Center entries?
Well, you need to edit the file C:\Windows\System32\oobe\Info\oobe.xml (note that the Windows system32 directory may be located elsewhere on your machine). You should make a backup copy of the oobe.xml file before you change it.
Note: Depending on your Vista version and your UAC settings, you may have to edit the file while logged in under the system Administrator account.
Look for items bracketed by
<task> </task>
- the offending items will be fairly obvious. Remove the ones you don't want, and be sure to delete the full
<task> </task>
block for each task item.
Save the oobe.xml file, restart the welcome center, and check your results. If things seem terribly out of whack, you can always restore the original copy you saved. You did save a copy of the unmodified oobe.xml file, didn't you?
edit vista welcome center
i have seen the same things over and over on the tech blogs. edit the oobe.xml; the offending items will be fairly obvious! NO way, I am trying to delete the Symantec promo link on the welcome center, the oobe file does not even have the word Symantec in the whole file. I see 'task' etc, but nothing to indicent what task.
I would love some simple method. I can only thank MS again for making something that is basically uneditable that should be a simple add or delete.
edit vista welcome center
"Well, you need to edit the file C:\Windows\System32\oobe\Info\oobe.xml (note that the Windows system32 directory may be located elsewhere on your machine). You should make a backup copy of the oobe.xml file before you change it."
Nearly correct, make path C:\Windows\System32\oobe\Info\default\**YOUR LANGUAGE**\oobe.xml in my case:
C:\Windows\System32\oobe\Info\default\1033\oobe.xml for English. I needed to run Notepad as administrator to allow file to be saved, but it worked - NO more Symantec ads.
Thanks
Greatly appreciated. Worked like a charm.
You Rock
No Rocket Science here!
Simple as could be!
Thanks Again!
Just delete the oobe.xml
yup! that's right. Just delete the oobe file and you're good to go for sure.
what happens if you delete
what happens if you delete the oobe file does it mess up the computer
There are tons of oobe.xml
There are tons of oobe.xml files in the "system32\oobe\..." directory. There is one oobe.xml file in the oobe directory. Open this file and look for the path of the oobe.xml file of your system.
Thanks
You rock!
Why doesn't Gateway or Microsoft Support know this?
I've been on the phone and chat all morning with Gateway and Microsoft to find this out and this is the only place that knows anything about it.
There's no oobe.xml file in
There's no oobe.xml file in my oobe directory!
I hate it when that happens...
I hate it when that happens.
Are you sure you have your system configured to show hidden files? Windows is (in)famous for not showing you everything...
The oobe.xml will only be in
The oobe.xml will only be in there if you have a customized Vista Welcome Center. This is most likely the case if you run on your manufacturer's default installation of Vista. If you installed a fresh and clean copy of Vista, there will be no oobe.xml file!
edit windows vista welcome center
This tip worked for me ! Thanks
Nearly correct, make path C:\Windows\System32\oobe\Info\default\**YOUR LANGUAGE**\oobe.xml in my case:
C:\Windows\System32\oobe\Info\default\1033\oobe.xml for English. I needed to run Notepad as administrator to allow file to be saved, but it worked - NO more Symantec ads.
could I just delete file
I do not want anything there
Clear the Oobe\Info folder
On a Toshiba machine (verfied on Satellite L305 and P305 series), if you delete the entire contents of the c:\windows\system32\oobe\Info\ folder it will clear out everything for the welcome center and Vista will simply revert to the default XML, which is stored in another location. This is also where proprietary logos are placed that appear on your welcome screen. Thus, if you don't want "Toshiba" written all over the place deleting those does help clean things up. This might work on other machine types as well.
Of course nowadays it's almost easier to pick up a pirated OEM disk and use the key provided to you by your manufacturer and just have a clean install of Vista in the first place.
backup
I recently made the mistake of sending some files to my backup (System restore) is there anyway to delete these files ? I have Windows Vista Basic
Thank SO MUCH! I wish info
Thank SO MUCH! I wish info like that was included in the windows help file!
Removing Unwanted Items from Vista Welcome Center
OK, this post was really useful but it did not relate to my case, an HP Notebook.
Because this post pointed me in the right direction, I thank all those that contributed, even though it seems that there are many places that it can be stored.
Yes, there are many files that hold these offensive items and deleting the whole OOBE directory would sort it out, but probably not a wise decision.
Alternatively, the following is s guide to how you can locate the ones that pertain to you.
It seems the country that the computer is set to is crucial. In Vista I did a TEXT SEARCH in the OOBE directory for one of them 'orrible icons (such as "Protect your business with Symantec"), I found about 20 files. Open each of the files (double-clicking opens the file in a browser - good enough for viewing). Search though the files and you will notice that the locale is shown (en_us, mine was en_nz), once you have found the locale of your computer, then the file you are viewing IS THE FILE THAT NEEDS TO BE EDITED.
Once you have found the file, you can simply rename it (allowing Administrative Privileges) or remove the section as shown by previous posts.
To see if you have gotten the right file, go back to the Welcome Center, press to refresh the screen and hopefully you got it first time. If not, try a different locale.
In US case the file was located in C:\Windows\System32\oobe\info\244\1033
This procedure will save hours of messing around.
Hope this may help someone!
james, you rock, thx
james, you rock, thx
Deleting/editing unwanted ads from Vista Welcome Center
Just checking in>my first look at this site for dos editing capabilities in Vista. Will try some editing on the Welcome Center & comment later.
Worked for me & it's something I've wanted to change for ages
Thanks for this one - very useful.
The garbage in the Welcome Center is something I find very irritating - especially the adverts for trial software (MS Office, anti-virus software, etc), the more so when most of my clients will be buying Office another way and be running the anti-nasties app that I recommend to them - Kaspersky Internet Security Suite.
What I'd like to do, as well, though, is how to remove the pre-installed trial version of MS Office that is found on so many blue-chip PCs - without affecting the version that they install in its place without having uninstalled the pre-existing version.
I know how to get rid of the wrong-version error message that is caused by this duplication - run each Office app as Administrator, one after the other (the message will not appear the next time the app is run) but it's not obvious how to uninstall the pre-installed MS Office version when another version has been installed afterwards.
Again, many thanks for this very useful Tech Tip post.
Bob Crabtree
DVdoctor & Computer Solutions