Internet promotion cd causing havoc

[haggisinlondon]

Morning

My father just phoned me from the hotel he works at in Scotland. He uses the computer there everyday to get his email and surf the internet. The office lady also uses the computer. This morning he tried to go onto the internet. He clicked on internet explorer as he always does but it all of a sudden brings up a window telling him to click continue to setup his freeserve internet account. He has always been using Virginnet, so what has happened is the office lady got a free CD with a magazine and has loaded it on the PC. If he cancels the freeserve connection thing it closes down his internet explorer. I asked him to check his connection and his dialup is still there and can connect but he can't open internet explorer because of this Freeserve thing?

How does he disable this thing and get his Internet Explorer running as normal again? Has anyone had this problem before?

Sorry for the dragged out post.

[Computer Hobbyist]

Boy I hate it wnen somebody messes with my computer.

From what I have been able to pick up, freeserve installs windows internet explorer as part of its install program. (I guess the nice folks at freeserve assume their users don't already have a browser when they sign up.) I don't know if it has installed a newer version or an older version of IE than the one previously installed. Maybe your father got lucky and it installed something later than IE 4.0 and therefore it has the ability to support multiple ISPs. If so, and if all else fails, your father can finish the install program and then delete the freeserve settings and reinstall the old ISP settings. He will need to call freeserve and tell them he doesn't want an account.

Like I said, I hate it when somebody messes with my computer.

I personally would be tempted to call freeserve and ask to speak with the CEO. Maybe he could give you tech support.
As an alternative you might read the information at this link. Apparently others have had problems with freeserve. This link provides more up to date information. That site will take you to this place. As you can tell, others have wanted to remove freeserve.


CH

[glc]

Let's look at something else first - look in add/remove programs for Freeserve. If not there or it's still screwed up after you uninstall it, look in add/remove for Internet Explorer, do an add/remove, and tell it to restore previous version.

I'm wondering - maybe if he ran INETWIZ and set up a new connection for his existing account, would this reset the IE shortcuts?

[Computer Hobbyist]

My first inclination was to suggest he uninstall it from add/remove. I had actually written a post to that effect, then I started researching the subject and discovered that Freeserve is little harder to remove than necessary.

The INETWIZ idea might work. Needs to be tried.

CH

[avx]

couldnt he try killing it at the source? Obviously this thing is getting directions from somewhere on the HD, it has to have a folder somewhere, maybe he could do a search and try and find any folder that match the words "freeserve" and try deleting them. Just an idea...correct me if Im wrong

[glc]

I'm assuming what has happened is his IE shortcut got repointed - or is it deeper than that?
Hmm - if its Win98, a scanreg/restore back to before the software was installed should fix it.

avx: Probably not, this has to be a registry thing where it's getting its directions from.