I strongly agree with your comments. I have had to watch software installations and even updates with AVG and even Adobe.
Para Dox
8 years ago
RealPlayer is the worst rogue utility by far that I have ever encountered. Prompted to install it by my Nvidia graphics software, I naively accepted. Once installed, it kept prompting to install some crap cloud storage utility. I found there was no uninstall for Realplayer that worked. I deleted what I could out of the RealPlayer installation folders, but one file was held open even after terminating all the RealPlayer tasks and processes, removing it from Startup, and rebooting. It would still reinstall itself. I went though the 100’s of registry entries it created and deleted them one by one manually, ran the Nortons registry cleaner, rebooted, and Realplayer still re-installed itself. I had to boot from another system disk, to delete the offending open file plus the rest of the RealPlayer folder, reboot from my original system disk, and repeat the painstaking process of manually deleting all the 100’s of rogue registry entries. It truly was like a virus. Mum & dad PC users would be stuck with it for life.
Also …. I remember now (it was all a few months ago) … RealPlayer installed itself in the taskbar and popped up with advertisements all the time.
I just noticed that Wiki RealPlayer say’s that in the past it installed spyware on the PC, and US-CERT has issued multiple security advisories reporting defects which allowed remote sites to use RealPlayer to execute attack code. PCWorld have had it on their lists of “The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time” and “The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products”
For the benefit of anyone with the same problem …. I now recall that to delete the offending file, I had to ‘Take Ownership’ from ‘Trusted Installer’ and change ownership to Administrators to be able to delete it.
Bob
8 years ago
I just installed Avast on a friend’s laptop and did the Custom Install to uncheck any crapware but it managed to slip Chrome in there somehow.
It went with not much of a fight tho. 🙂
Karel
8 years ago
I use AVG free for more than 25 years while at the company I worked we had the payed version. I recal only 2 mistakes from AVG a few years ago deleting someting in the system32 folder resulting in starting up in A loop. I never let AVG delete or put in the vault automatic but allways let him ask before deleting). Nowadays Just as you mentioned AVG is proposing A toolbar. As long as this is all and visible I’ll stay with AVG 2015 free.
authorized user
6 years ago
Kaspersky Free has none of these annoying practices.
I strongly agree with your comments. I have had to watch software installations and even updates with AVG and even Adobe.
RealPlayer is the worst rogue utility by far that I have ever encountered. Prompted to install it by my Nvidia graphics software, I naively accepted. Once installed, it kept prompting to install some crap cloud storage utility. I found there was no uninstall for Realplayer that worked. I deleted what I could out of the RealPlayer installation folders, but one file was held open even after terminating all the RealPlayer tasks and processes, removing it from Startup, and rebooting. It would still reinstall itself. I went though the 100’s of registry entries it created and deleted them one by one manually, ran the Nortons registry cleaner, rebooted, and Realplayer still re-installed itself. I had to boot from another system disk, to delete the offending open file plus the rest of the RealPlayer folder, reboot from my original system disk, and repeat the painstaking process of manually deleting all the 100’s of rogue registry entries. It truly was like a virus. Mum & dad PC users would be stuck with it for life.
Also …. I remember now (it was all a few months ago) … RealPlayer installed itself in the taskbar and popped up with advertisements all the time.
I just noticed that Wiki RealPlayer say’s that in the past it installed spyware on the PC, and US-CERT has issued multiple security advisories reporting defects which allowed remote sites to use RealPlayer to execute attack code. PCWorld have had it on their lists of “The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time” and “The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products”
That’s a really bad user experience. I’m glad that we don’t have to use RealPlayer anymore and that there are so many better alternatives.
For the benefit of anyone with the same problem …. I now recall that to delete the offending file, I had to ‘Take Ownership’ from ‘Trusted Installer’ and change ownership to Administrators to be able to delete it.
I just installed Avast on a friend’s laptop and did the Custom Install to uncheck any crapware but it managed to slip Chrome in there somehow.
It went with not much of a fight tho. 🙂
I use AVG free for more than 25 years while at the company I worked we had the payed version. I recal only 2 mistakes from AVG a few years ago deleting someting in the system32 folder resulting in starting up in A loop. I never let AVG delete or put in the vault automatic but allways let him ask before deleting). Nowadays Just as you mentioned AVG is proposing A toolbar. As long as this is all and visible I’ll stay with AVG 2015 free.
Kaspersky Free has none of these annoying practices.
That is correct, and one of the reasons why we rated it so highly, in our review.