Why On-Screen Build Information & How To Remove?

[Guest]

I recently upgraded from 98se to XP-home on my old home system (AMD
K6-2/400Mhz, 256MB RAM, late 90's BIOS). Other than some to-be-expected
problems with legacy ISA hardware and some applications, it went well.
However, the system now displays the build information on the lower right
just above the toolbar. It even went from listing SP1 to SP2 as part of the
information after I installed the new service pack. It's there regardless of
any desktop background setting I've tried.

I found this odd as I've never seen or heard of such a thing including
during a recent upgrade of an office system from ME to XP-home. As best I can
tell from looking through the registry, it's coming from some area tied to
some NT keys/values, but that's a best guess on my part.

I'd really like to turn this off. Whatever eye candy XP offers, it's spoiled
by this omnipresent build information. I'm not above hacking the registry as
long as I can get straight forward directions on doing so although I'd love
to hear that there's some other setting I can tweak to deal with this.

Any suggestions appreciated.

 

[David Candy]

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
PaintDesktopVersion

Some software forces this on in which case it can't be turned off.

 

[Guest]

Thanks David!

I did discover that the referenced key was set at "1". Although I tried
resetting to "0" (thinking binary), that didn't change the behavior. When I
deleted the value altogether, that cleared the screen.