New
#1
Explorer.exe non-stop "RetailDemo" registry calls
Anyone know what is going on here and how to stop it?
Windows version 22H2 19045.2846
Explorer.exe non-stop "RetailDemo" registry calls
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New #2
Oobe = "Out of Box Experience". Happens when you do a full reset of the OS. It is not hurting anything since that registry entry is there on ALL versions of Windows.
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New #3
Edit: Refer to the post right under my post.
Got the same Registry value on my end:
Same thing here.
(A "zero" entry for "Enabled" means that this certain feature is disabled)
After some quick online research, it seems like this is some sort of option to Enable a built-in "Demo" version of Windows, when it is intended to be shown as a demonstration to people, in order to attract interest, and people would like to check out features or what-not of Windows 10:
"RetailDemo\OobeWrite" - Search
-> Delete or Enable Retail Demo mode in Windows 11/10Last edited by pepanee; 27 Apr 2023 at 21:13.
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New #4
Brink has a tutorial....
Turn On or Off Retail Demo Experience Mode in Windows 10Windows 10 includes a retail demo experience mode meant for retail use. It allows PCs on display at retail stores to go into a demonstration environment so customers can see and try the features of Windows 10.
If you purchased a demo PC, you may find that it is still be in retail demo mode with a Darrin DeYoung account, and would want to turn off the retail demo experience mode.
For developers: Create a retail demo experience app - UWP app developer | Microsoft Docs
This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off the retail demo experience mode on a Windows 10 PC.
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New #5
Thanks guys. Guess it's nothing too serious then.
Is this happening on your systems as well?
Any idea what the purpose of checking and writing that registry key every 1 or 2 seconds is? Seems pretty pointless...
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New #6
Yes there are going to be some items in the registry that the OS will check for constantly.
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New #7
I'm using the same Windows 22H2 19045.2846 version and I don't see those constant RetailDemo open/set/close key operations in Process Monitor so I think there IS an issue... but I don't know why Explorer is doing what it's doing.
Perhaps more detail?
Q. What made you look using ProcMon?
Q. Have you filtered out any FAILURE or NAME NOT FOUND events from the ProcMon results?
Q. What value is the RegSetInfoKey operation writing?
Q. How long since this started?
Q. Is this a new/very recent install of Windows?
The reason I ask is that, following completion of OOBE, Windows should have removed all Retail Demo Experience components within 7 days (unless your device has 32GB or less of storage, in which case the interval before removal is only half-an-hour).
As a result, Windows shouldn't really have any reason to be worrying about Retail Demo. So, if Explorer is writing a value and querying another value within a RetailDemo registry branch then that suggests something is wrong - perhaps an OOBE glitch or maybe it's because it's a very recent/new install and the cleanup interval has not yet been reached.
Hope this helps...
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New #8
RickC is right. Why is your computer always resetting that option constantly? (Techniocally speaking, n othing bad is happening over time, but something is making your computer to sconsistently wanting to always set the default values for that. Kinda weird.
What does this show?
Is yours Manual?
If not, set it to Manual. Restart the computer. Watch Process Monitor. Did it stop logging all that? Problem Solved.
If still logged, See if you can Disable this service, and restart the computer. Now watch Process Monitor. Did it stop? Problem Solved.
If not, comment back...
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New #9
I delete the RetailDemo service, although a safer version is to set the service to Disabled.
The other thing is to use the Disk Clean-up tool to remove RetailDemo content:
Hope this helps...
EDIT: Hmm... I used to clean RetailDemo content using Disk Clean-up but I just checked on a recent install of 22H2 and the entry is no longer there, irrespective of whether I run Disk Clean-up as normal or using Run as administrator... or use the Clean up system files button to widen the search. Looks like Windows may not download content any longer in case you want to run Retail Demo offline.
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New #10
That's weird how you have that entry in Disk Cleanup. I've never seen that entry there, and I just went into Disk Cleanup. I don't see that entry there, again. I even pressed the "Clean up system files" button. I am shown more entries, and still don't see the "RetailDemo Offline Content" there. I'm assuming your entry got created after you played around with that feature and enabled it; I haven't enabled it on my computer while going through everything above.
Let's hope that after the original poser adjusts the Service settings for that service (as I stated above), could possibly stop Windows from re-creating the default values in the Registry consistently...
EDIT (8:25 AM my local time):
To Rick: Sorry, I just put 2 and 2 together, and saw you said you had your Service removed. So the picture you got was probably off the internet. So there's a bunch of text that I typed above that doesn't apply. Just ignore the stuff that doesn't apply. lol.
AND
I just read your edit above. I think I just confused myself or something. Haha. Don't worry about it,.Last edited by pepanee; 28 Apr 2023 at 10:28.
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