Removing Eircom registration from IE startup

Stky10

I'm helping an old workmate with his PC. Its an XP home
machine. He used to be with Eircom, but has now changed
to another provider for his dialup connection. Anyway, when
he starts IE, the registration process for Eircom takes over
the whole screen (so that the back, forward, stop, refresh,
home etc buttons cannot be seen), and trys to force him in
to signing up with Eircom. Pressing ctrl-o and entering the
address of another site outside Eircom doesnt work as the
connection is immediately dropped.

I upgraded the machine to SP2 to try and get rid of it but
without success.

I've checked the Control Panel> Add/Remove software,
but there doesnt seem to any Eircom related packages
there.

So has anybody seen this before?, and is there a way
around it other than reinstalling the entire OS??
Is there a way to define which libraries/DLL's are loaded
on startup of IE, and thus remove anything related to
Eircom??

fletch

Just sign up for a free account, then it'll stop hassling you and you can change the settings after...(thats what I did or is there any option to uninstall in add/remove?)

Stky10

I tried that, but it gets to a stage where it asks for your Eircom
account number and phone number. As he's not with Eircom
anymore he doesnt have an account number..

The Insider

Hi

There is no need to reinstall the OS or anything drastic like this, there is a simple fix for this but for the life of me I can't rememeber, you have to go into the C drive and rename a file or delete a folder...its on the tip of my tounge but I can't quite remember, if you ring eircom net support they will fix it for you in 5 mins... sorry i just can't remember the name of the folder

Sherifu

If i was you id scan with adaware or spysweeper
This is nothing short of adware.
Shame on you Eircom.

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

or

http://www.webroot.com/products/spysweeper/

RKM.

Japseye

I had this problem on a couple of occasions, bastarding eircom cds drive me cracked. Its the same with some of those other cds like oceanfree and indogo. Anyway from what i remember all i did was go into add/remove programs and uninstalled internet explorer. When you try and uninstall it , it asks you do you want to revert to the previous version so you do. thinking of it now though I think it was on Win2k machines not xp so that may make a difference.

Japs

irishgeo

remenber doing once and i must have deleted every file related to eircom on the disk and in thr registry.

not sure which one actually worked.

I certainly dont know which one it is in XP

frodi

When it happened me I deleted a file in c:\program files\internet explorer and that did the trick. It's similar to browser hijackers, once the destination of the hijack is lost the browser opens in the usual home page.

paddy

Japseye wrote:

I had this problem on a couple of occasions, bastarding eircom cds drive me cracked. Its the same with some of those other cds like oceanfree and indogo. Anyway from what i remember all i did was go into add/remove programs and uninstalled internet explorer. When you try and uninstall it , it asks you do you want to revert to the previous version so you do. thinking of it now though I think it was on Win2k machines not xp so that may make a difference.

Japs

That worked for me too
:cool:

seamus

Check the homepage of IE and the Dial-up profiles set up.

Control Panel->Internet Options

Reset the homepage to something neutral like Google, and delete any eircom dial-up profiles.

If there's nothing there, then it's a registry setting. I wouldn't know where to look for it - Mayeb under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hierarchy, do a search for "eircom". I wouldn't recommend doing anything unless you know what you're doing

Japseye

Did ya get it sorted , just wondering what you did to reslove it? :eek:

Stky10

Sorry, havent had a chance to look at it since....
I was busy friday, went home for the weekend,
and I have an interview on Monday, so it will be
tuesday evening before I try again.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I'm not so sure
they'll work. I tried uninstalling IE completely before
I installed SP2, and it didnt work. It removed the
Iexplore.exe file from the IE folder but not the
other files in the directory (maybe I should have
done a manual delete), and once I'd reinstalled
the problem reoccured.

I'll try the adaware programs though, cos his
kids have installed 101 programs on it and I noticed
bargainbuddy and other muck on it the last time
I was there.

I'll also have a quick look through the registry as well
and try and get rid of all things Eircom. I've been
thinking since though that reinstalling the OS probably
wouldnt work unless I wiped the drive completely, and
I dont want to do that because its a Dell machine, and
he's either lost the relevant Windows CD's or else he
never received them, and I only have a copy of XP Pro
instead of XP Home.

Anyway, I'll let you know how I do when I after I get
a chance to visit him again....cheers for the suggestions...

jd

AFAIR thsi is caused by an abnormal termination or shutdown when internet explorer is in kiosk (internet signup) mode. Not so much an eircom or oceanfree thing, rather a msoft thing. Can't remember how to fix it though..

jd

jd

found 1 or 2 things

http://groups.google.ie/groups?q=%22stuck+in++kiosk+mode%22&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&scoring=d&selm=%23QmbnLDQ%24GA.252%40cppssbbsa05&rnum=3

http://groups.google.ie/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&selm=%23mwDyB5V9GA.218%40uppssnewspub04.moswest.msn.net


doesn't give the cure..

deevey

Delete the signup folder in c:\program files\Internet explorer\signup ...

No need for system restores, IE uninstalls or otherwise

Same applies if you ever get the crappy MSN signup on a fresh install of windoze.

Laters

Stky10

Cheers for the help with this, if I've time this evening
I'll give it a try and let you know how it goes...

moridin

Yup, what Deevey says should work for you alright, a load of ISP's use that little Signup Loop thing with the CD's that they send out to customers and potential customers

Stugots

Does anyone know how to actually do this?

I posted a separate thread looking for equivalent fucntionality a few days ago and got no reply. The basic application is this: small business want to make monitor, keyboard and mouse available in a public place for the purposes of accessing a single website. Customers can enter a user id and examine the contents of main page and sub pages of this website only. Sounds like this facility might do the trick. How do set up one of these registration loops?

deevey

You could the website address proxy in the web browser settings pointing to a remote location hosting the site i guess , and admin lock the machine so no browser settings can be changed ?

very simple way of doing it, try it with www.boards.ie in the proxy settings port 80, you cant open anything but boards

also look to strip the windows down so no other internet progs are available, I highly recommend litexp or 98lite to cut out the crap from windoze e.g. media player, loads of unessesary services etc.that might prompt people to play (and break) the machine e.g. paint, solataire etc... also check out nlite for a bootable self installing xp disc with only what you want included in the install. Should be able to cut XP down to about 150 - 200 megs and 98 to about 70 megs (or less). So alot less to worry about.

Im sure theres a way of launching the website full screen as with the ISP discs unsure how though, maybe the .exe to full screen flash movie ?. Above method is probably easier though just remove all other desktop Icons and change the icon to match the website lock the comp and away you go.

OR how about uitilising the Active desktop in 98+to point to a particular site (again use the proxy settings) remove all the icons from the desktop and i'm sure theres a way of removing the menu bar

You can close the ISP (or any) fullscreen window by pressing ctrl+w and defeat it also by running the new connection wizard so maybe the active desktop is a good one to try.

Laters

Stky10

Got the chance last night to go out and finish the job.

Deleted the signup directory and it fixed the problem.

Also ran Ad-aware because I mentioned before that I
saw bargainbuddy running. It found 580 critical objects.
I was in shock. I remember a couple of months ago when
I got a fresh machine, and installed every application known
to man, and then ran ad-aware and I only got about 40
critical objects. His kids have a lot of games installed, but
from a quick look at his system I couldnt tell what they'd
installed that would have caused so much sh$t to be there.

Thanks again for the suggestions...

Sherifu

Sounds like the security settings should be tightened
and/or employ a program for spyware blocking.

Stugots

deevey wrote:

You could the website address proxy in the web browser settings pointing to a remote location hosting the site i guess , and admin lock the machine so no browser settings can be changed ?

very simple way of doing it, try it with www.boards.ie in the proxy settings port 80, you cant open anything but boards

Excellent - Thanks for the help (+ sorry everyone else for drifting slightly off topic).

Unfortunately with the settings above, it prevented me from giving you rep points!!!

jd

Stugots wrote:

Excellent - Thanks for the help (+ sorry everyone else for drifting slightly off topic).

Unfortunately with the settings above, it prevented me from giving you rep points!!!

another thing is try running iexplore.exe -k

that gets internet explorer into kiosk mode