Taffycat
Crunchy Cat
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2006
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The ZA in question was on my OH's XP-pro. It had been running comfortably with the AV component of MSE. (If you recall, MSE for XP was a bit quirky and one could only download the AV part, so rather than use Microsoft's own firewall... which folk used to say was, perhaps not so efficient on XP, we stuck with ZA.)
Sorry - that sounds a bit "involved" but hope you've got the gist.... anyway, when I attempted to update ZA (free version btw) yesterday, I became really annoyed when it began to download it's toolbar!
Before anyone jumps on me, yes, I saw three "ticks" when I was going through the installation procedure. However, when I hovered the mouse over them, they didn't react as they should, so I couldn't un-check them. (Dumbly, I assumed there would be another option to refuse the toolbar, somewhere along the line...)
When SuperAntiSpyware popped-up, warning me that a programme was trying to change the browser, I told it to block. I also stopped the installer, then began the procedure again. This time, when I hovered over those ticks, they responded, so I un-ticked all three of them! But guess what, ZA had other ideas and installed it anyway. It changed the browser's home page to ZA etc.
Enough was enough so I decided to completely uninstall the whole darned thing. (Naturally, I turned-on Windows own firewall afterwards.) But, the browser was still (in my view) hi-jacked. So I used CC to make sure all left-over bits and pieces were removed from the registry. Then re-booted.
Blasted ZA promptly re-appeared in the sys tray, informing me that the system "is protected!" I don't see how, because its gubbins have been uninstalled, but indeed, it had even switched off Windows Firewall. (Yes, I know and understand that one cannot use two firewalls together... but heck, there should now only be one on the machine. Windows Firewall.)
I can only conclude that ZA has now become no better than a piece of malware, because even after switching off the PC completely, for several minutes, it still returned to the sys tray on re-boot... again!
Does anyone know of a way to get rid of it please...? Right now, the only way is to right click the sys tray icon to tell it to quit. (On the last occasion, at least it hadn't succeeded in turning off Windows Firewall again - but obviously I'll have to check it whenever the PC is re-booted.
Thanks very much for reading, any suggestions gratefully received.
(Footnote: XP is working fine on that old PC, but yes, it feels a bit clunky now, so seriously thinking of installing a more up-to-date OS,,, which I'm sure someone will suggest, lol. But therein lies another small problem, for a different thread... needing to tackle this one first though. )
Sorry - that sounds a bit "involved" but hope you've got the gist.... anyway, when I attempted to update ZA (free version btw) yesterday, I became really annoyed when it began to download it's toolbar!
Before anyone jumps on me, yes, I saw three "ticks" when I was going through the installation procedure. However, when I hovered the mouse over them, they didn't react as they should, so I couldn't un-check them. (Dumbly, I assumed there would be another option to refuse the toolbar, somewhere along the line...)
When SuperAntiSpyware popped-up, warning me that a programme was trying to change the browser, I told it to block. I also stopped the installer, then began the procedure again. This time, when I hovered over those ticks, they responded, so I un-ticked all three of them! But guess what, ZA had other ideas and installed it anyway. It changed the browser's home page to ZA etc.
Enough was enough so I decided to completely uninstall the whole darned thing. (Naturally, I turned-on Windows own firewall afterwards.) But, the browser was still (in my view) hi-jacked. So I used CC to make sure all left-over bits and pieces were removed from the registry. Then re-booted.
Blasted ZA promptly re-appeared in the sys tray, informing me that the system "is protected!" I don't see how, because its gubbins have been uninstalled, but indeed, it had even switched off Windows Firewall. (Yes, I know and understand that one cannot use two firewalls together... but heck, there should now only be one on the machine. Windows Firewall.)
I can only conclude that ZA has now become no better than a piece of malware, because even after switching off the PC completely, for several minutes, it still returned to the sys tray on re-boot... again!
Does anyone know of a way to get rid of it please...? Right now, the only way is to right click the sys tray icon to tell it to quit. (On the last occasion, at least it hadn't succeeded in turning off Windows Firewall again - but obviously I'll have to check it whenever the PC is re-booted.
Thanks very much for reading, any suggestions gratefully received.
(Footnote: XP is working fine on that old PC, but yes, it feels a bit clunky now, so seriously thinking of installing a more up-to-date OS,,, which I'm sure someone will suggest, lol. But therein lies another small problem, for a different thread... needing to tackle this one first though. )