Disable The Program Might Not Have Installed Correctly

While installing or running programs on your computer, the chances are very good you will have encountered a window that pops up telling you “This program might not have installed correctly“. There was a new feature introduced in Windows Vista and 7 which is supposed to actively monitor and detect the known compatibility issues with older programs when you try and run or install them. If it detects any potential issues, it will throw up the not installed correctly window. You will then have a choice whether to try to reinstall with the recommended settings, which is usually detecting issues with User Account Control or trying to run the program as an earlier version of Windows in compatibility mode. Or you can simply tell it there was no problem and carry on.

That’s the theory anyway. Unfortunately, the Program Compatibility Assistant is far from perfect, and quite often will show the window when there have been no issues at all with the program or installer. Even worse, this window will also be triggered by a lot of portable software, or even when you simply cancel an install process. If you are someone that likes to try out a lot of different software, or use a number of portable programs, this window showing up so often can be quite irritating.

Note: We would not recommend disabling this if you are an average computer user, however, if you are an advanced user who knows the complete issue, go ahead and disable this annoying popup window.



This dialog box is showed because of Program Compatibility Assistant service which is running in the background. This service is started during startup.
Head over to Start Search, type services.msc, and hit Enter. Search for Program Compatibility Assistance Service, right-click it, and hit Stop.



Once the service is stopped, right-click it again and go to Properties. From the Startup Type drop-down menu, select Disabled and hit OK.



Now restart the system. To confirm if Program Compatibility Assistant is completely disabled, open Task Manager(Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and search for PcaSvc services in Services tab. If you don’t find it, congratulations the service has been disabled!