I recently purchased an eMachine PC. With Internet Explorer, if a page takes a little too long to fully download, MSIE will automatically redirect to a Gateway/eMachines search page. If I click the back arrow, it will usually go back to the page I was trying to get to before. This doesn’t happen in Firefox.
I think that the problem is partly due to a flaky internet connection (that I won’t bother you guys with), but it’s really annoying when a page that I want gets about 90% open (i.e. all except for pictures that I don’t care about anyway), and then automatically redirects. It’s not a virus, because it’s done this since the day I bought it.
It’s really just an annoyance, but it ticks me off, and I want it to stop. I searched online for a fix to this, but was unsuccessful.
Don’t worry about that… (obviously, I just bumped like ten threads)… (seriously)
If they (Emachines) do that, I, and most other geek-asses, would consider that to be unethical behaviour by any computer builder.
Surely it’s a simple setting in IE… check the preferences.
I consider eMachines a bunch of crap, and it’s unfortunate you wasted your money on one. Technically, your computer has been infected with a browser hijack virus - one that was deliberately installed at the factory. Your internet connection may be flaky, but it doesn’t cause your brower to redirect. It’s something that was added on that affects IE. Firefox is more resistant to that sort of thing; also, they probably don’t think most of their customers ever heard of Firefox. I’m trying to find more information on the IE problem for you.
IE is better for lazy web designers who don’t want to be bothered meeting the standards, and for hackers. Microsoft insists on putting nonstandard features into IE because they are arrogant bastards. It’s not Firefox that is broken, but IE.
What it sounds like you are describing is a fairly common IE “feature” that has been personalized by eMachines as the distributors of Windows. I don’t believe there is anything underhanded about what they are doing here.
The feature, as near as I can tell, is that IE has an internal timer and if a page doesn’t finish loading in a certain window of time, it times out and does it’s own search “in an effort to be helpful” and in truth give Microsoft (or in this case Gateway/eMachines) more ad hits on the search.
I second everyone’s recommendation of moving to Firefox 2. Have you looked into the IE Tab addon? It allows you to view a page with the IE rendering engine, while within Firefox.
Yes, exactly. Do you have any idea how to turn off this feature, or increase the timer?
I have firefox, but the website that I use for work just works slightly differently in MSIE. I’ll break it down for y’all, in case you can fix this minor annoyance with FF:
When I open up a page to close a call, what takes 1 [Tab] in IE takes 2 in Firefox. because in IE, the cursor is already in a certain field, so I just need to hit [Tab] once to get where I need to start. In FF, the focus seems to start out on the frame (I hope that makes sense), so the first [Tab] puts the cursor in the first field, and the 2nd puts it in the field that I need to start.
I know it sounds trivial, but when you have to go through this sequence several times, an extra step is a lot. But mainly, because of the extra tab thing, a while back I chose IE for this application and use FF for other websites on the other monitor. So I’m used to the "[Tab] out time [Tab] start time [Tab] end time [Tab][Tab] R [Tab]
Sorry about the doublepost. In recreating my tab-fest, I accidentally hit submit too soon. Here’s all of it:
Yes, exactly. Do you have any idea how to turn off this feature, or increase the timer?
I have firefox, but the website that I use for work just works slightly differently in MSIE. I’ll break it down for y’all, in case you can fix this minor annoyance with FF:
When I open up a page to close a call, what takes 1 [Tab] in IE takes 2 in Firefox. because in IE, the cursor is already in a certain field, so I just need to hit [Tab] once to get where I need to start. In FF, the focus seems to start out on the frame (I hope that makes sense), so the first [Tab] puts the cursor in the first field, and the 2nd puts it in the field that I need to start.
I know it sounds trivial, but when you have to go through this sequence several times, an extra step is a lot. But mainly, because of the extra tab thing, a while back I chose IE for this application and use FF for other websites on the other monitor. So I’m used to the “[Tab] out time [Tab] start time [Tab] end time [Tab][Tab] R [Tab] mileage [Tab] [Tab] [spacebar], etc…” routine, and an extra [Tab] screws me up.
I don’t think that this is an issue of “nonstandard features” in IE, but a minor difference in how FF handles pages with frames; specifically where focus begins.*
I appreciate any help.
(There’s also another issue that FF has a problem with on my company’s website, where an “Exit” button simply doesn’t work, but it works in IE. I don’t know if that’s a “nonstandard features” kinda thing, but that’s the kind of thing that will have to be handled my company, if at all. I couldn’t begin to give y’all enough info to guess at the cause without giving up more personal info than I care to.)
If you want to “clean up” some stuff eMachines has put in IE for you, check out Hijack This from Tom Coyote. It will show you, among other things, a list of “helper” programs attached to your browsers and let you remove them with the click of a button.
If you need help analyzing your log before deleting things, feel free to post the log here or better yet at the Security board at the Tech Guy Forums (where sm4rt people are sitting around all day waiting for you to post your HJT log).
eMachines are a poor choice if you want to do your own upgrades, and especially if you play a lot of games. They use a lot of nonstandard components and drivers, which is a big pain. And power supplies should fail only rarely, not “sometimes”.
Well for $400 what do you expect. And actually their components are standard, it’s a standard ATX case. The only thing a bit unstandard is the face of their optical drives, they’re convex. But you can still put an off-the-shelf replacement drive into an eMachine.
You didn’t waste anyone’s time - who knows how many people reading this had a similar problem, and are grateful that you posted AND came up with the answer?
They also tend to use off-brand or proprietary sound and video hardware. If you want to upgrade to better sound or video cards, or even just get current drivers, good luck.
You just plug the new video card in and away you go. That said, I wouldn’t buy an eMachine to play games, other than maybe 2d puzzle games. It’s a good home computer for those that surf the net and do e-mail, or a good general office computer. I never understood why people bought $2,000 multimedia computers to surf the net on 56k…
