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INTERNET FIXED, BUT... |      |
| » CATEGORY: Daily Blog | BY:
tgbob « |
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| » POSTED ON: 2/16/2008 5:08:41 PM | MOOD:
pissed off « |
BUT...
Big but there... while the service guy was working on "fixing the problem", I was keeping Adolph occupied. She was all interested in the big bag of equipment he brought with him. Needless to say, I wasn't paying attention to what he was doing, as I was trying to keep Adolph from getting in his stuff. Well, later on in the day, I got on my computer and inadvertently typed in a wrong address. Well, it was this mistyped address that led me to a discovery. Normally, if an incorrect address would be typed, my browser would be redirecting to Google search. To my surprise, the page went, instead, to a COMCAST search! Well, that was only the beginning. I come to find that while I wasn't looking, the tech installed a bunch of Comcast software on my machine without my permission! And, to top it all off, my Internet Explorer was branded with the Comcast tag line (Internet Explorer Provided By Comcast, in case you didn't know what I meant).
Now I know for a fact that none of this stuff was necessary, as all that was wrong was a bad modem. So why did this tech feel it necessary to install this stuff on my computer, as well as change settings? I'm not much of a network specialist, but I do know my way around a computer, since I program for a living, and I know that absolutely NONE of this stuff he did was necessary to the task at hand. Anybody who knows me well enough knows how paranoid I am around my computer equipment, too! Just ask Strike! He's one of my best friends, but everytime he uses one of my systems, I almost always tell him "Don't install weird stuff on my computer"! I guess I should have taken the same precautions with a tech who was simply supposed to check and fix the speed problems.
For the record, here is a list of the changes I've found and fixed so far, so in case any other Comcast users have techs come to their house to fix problems, you will know how to clean up the mess.
1) Comcast Search - As described above, if you use the address bar as a search mechanism, or type in a wrong or unavailable address, your IE will take you to a default search engine to display the results. The Comcast tech changed mine, but this is an easy problem to fix. All you do is go to Tools - Internet Options, and in the section labeled Search, press the Settings button. You will see a list of search providers. Select the one you want to use, and hit the Set Default button. If you want to, you can then select the Comcast search option, and hit Remove to be rid of it forever.
2) IE Branding - Also described above, this is where a company will "brand" your IE title bar with their company name. Obviously, it wasn't there before, so I didn't want it. If you ever want to remove the Comcast branding from your IE title bar, first close down IE, then go to the Start menu, and select Run. Now, copy and paste the following text in your Run dialog box, and press OK...
Rundll32 iedkcs32.dll,Clear
This actually should work for any branding you may have, so if you have had another company brand your IE, you know what you doing!
3) Various shortcuts - simple to take care of. There were some shortcuts on my desktop. Just selected, and deleted.
4) Software installed: Desktop Doctor - This was the one shortcut on my desktop I didn't delete, because it led to an actual program. Simple to remove this - just went to Control Panel - Add or Remove Programs. It appeared in the list as "Desktop Doctor". Selected, and deleted. That also removed the shortcut.
5) Cleanup - The above were the things I had found changed, but then there is the task of getting rid of all the temp stuff and leftovers of said changes. Two folders I found would need deleted. First, there is still a C:\Program Files\Comcast folder. Simply delete that folder. Also found a folder in my Application Data folder (C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Application Data). The name of the folder is SupportSoft. This folder contains all of the install files for the IE branding and Desktop Doctor that was installed. Delete that as well. To wrap up the cleanup, I did a general computer search using the search term "Comcast" and found a few extra files. Deleted those as well.
Well, that's all I had found on my system. Anybody else who may have had the same thing happen to them may chime in if I missed anything. Now, time to start thinking of how I will word my complaint to Comcast directly... not that they will listen, though.
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OPINIONS: 4 PEOPLE APPROVED, WHILE 2 PEOPLE DISAPPROVED
