[DigeratiPrime]

I know I am preaching to the choir because we probably all reinstall Windows over the bundled garbage that comes with new pcs, but a senior executive at Microsoft is finally saying something about this problem.

Quote

"We call them craplets," the official said. The term is a contraction of the words "crap" and "applet."

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/01...-microsoft.html
saw it at /. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/0...56&from=rss

[Camarade_Tux]

At school, PCs are DELLs. I just "fixed" one (installed FF and setted up proxy because I couldn't in IE because of permissions and also prevented winlock to startup [pretty easy]).
It was impossible to have google as homepage : always dellfr.myway.com. Guess what, there was a myway BHO! And even with it removed the problem remains.

No wonder they can cause problems : "-hey tech support, why can't I change my homepage ? -because my boss had a deal to get even richer!". :-/

[TravisO]

If you removed the MyWay BHO and it still alters the webpage, then you're still infected.

Maybe you should give Windows Defender a shot, assuming you can actually install things, otherwise a pre-installed copy of Spybot might do the trick.

[Camarade_Tux]

I don't really care : this account does not have write permissions to the registry and since IE uses it to store proxy settings, I can't access secured pages (webmails). FF will do the trick.

But I think you didn't understand myway is part of standard dell installations! Even with it removed (activex removed and dll renamed) it was still locked. And few users would remove an activex.

Maybe dell's apps are vista-compatible but they're simply shi*. It's like:
-Hey, I just got a new television
-great let's plug it!
-Why am I stuck on this channel that only features ads ?

:reallymad:

[Ludwig Von Cookie Koopa]

To sum up what I see in this entire article.

We at MissingSoft want to prevent random programmers from writting programs or any related vendor to sell whatever program they want on our OS regaurdless that our OS is the only chioce.

However the law prevents us from doing so since PC is not a toy device like a famicom, a learning device like speaking spell, or a life aid like life alert. They say computer OSes can not be catergorized as one of the above and are used infinitly.

So we are going to try and prevent people from selling there programs which they use to put food on there table and dubb these peoples programs craplets.

Anything that is certified by the Murdersoft company is not a craplet but then again anything that comes with our software is not craplets. We at Larvosoft is only doing what we feel is right.

[cluberti]

Or...

Quote

"We at Microsoft would like to see PC vendors sending the Windows Vista operating system to the user the way it was installed by default, without untested and unsupported 3rd party applications loaded. We understand that all businesses are out to make a profit, and that some of these 'craplets' may be made by people who need the PC vendors to install said 'craplets' so that money can be made by the 'craplet' author. However, customers are buying PC hardware and an installation of Microsoft Windows Vista from the vendor of said PC hardware, and are not directly purchasing these 'craplets'. The PC hardware vendor has not tested nor supports these 'craplets', whereas they are supporting the PC hardware and the Microsoft Vista operating system shipped on said hardware. Since consumers are not being informed that they are buying said 'craplets' when buying a piece of PC hardware with Microsoft Windows Vista on it, and also due to the fact that most of these 'craplets' do nothing more than reduce (sometimes greatly) the overall performance, reliability, and user experience of said PC hardware and Microsoft Windows Vista, these 'craplets' should no longer be installed on manufacturer's installations of Microsoft Windows Vista on PC hardware by default, and should at the very least be an optional installation after the user turns on said PC hardware and has had a chance to configure and use Microsoft Windows Vista."

"This change, at the very least, will increase the performance of the PC hardware and Microsoft Windows Vista installed thereon, reduce the cost of support of said PC hardware and Microsoft Windows Vista installed thereon for the manufacturer or vendor, and may even perhaps allow them to hire more trained engineers to handle the real problems that will arise, rather than the cheapest engineer they can hire off of the street who will simply disable or uninstall said 'craplets' and defragment the user's volume(s) to resolve the percieved performance issue, which could have been avoided in the first place by not preinstalling said 'craplets' onto the PC hardware and Microsoft Windows Vista in the first place."

[eidenk]

$10.000 to get your software Vista certified by MS AFAIK.