I uninstalled Comet Cursor--and my computer quit locking up! So neener neener!

The BBQ Pit
1

No, my friends, this is not a rant. This is a celebration–a celebration of life without a computer that locks up every time you’re online, a celebration of surfing the Internet without having to restart the computer 20 times in a row, a celebration, in short, of life without Comet Cursor.

All summer, whenever we were on the Internet, the computer would lock up capriciously, at totally unpredictable intervals. Sometimes one restart would be enough to get it surfing safely again, sometimes it would go 20 restarts in a row without ever being able to get online and stay online.

It did it to me the most often. Next in frequency was the Better Half, and it hardly ever did it to the kids. People started to accuse me of having the Evil Eye. “Geez, Mom, whadja do?”

So last Friday it was in one of “those moods”, locking up every time I’d been online for periods of 1 to 5 minutes. Turn it off, turn it on, wait for ScanDisk to run (Windows ME, non-optional ScanDisk, “An illegal shutdown has been detected”), Sign on to MSN, surf for a minute or two–lock up. Do it again. And again. And again.

Finally I started watching to see what it was exactly that I was doing at the time it was freezing, and it came to me that it was something to do, first, with the mouse. I move the mouse a lot, looking stuff up on Google, and when I moved the mouse a lot, it locked up faster than when I moved it slower. So I tried using the mouse as little as possible, which helped, giving me maybe 5 minutes online before it locked up.

Then I realized that when I was using the mouse as little as possible, and I managed to get as far as a SDMB Reply window, when I started typing fast, that was also when it would lock up. “Ah ha!” I thought. “It’s something to do with the cursor!”

I started watching my cursor keystrokes, and sure enough, with every keystroke, the hard drive would whir and blink its orange light, and when I got into a Reply window and typed really fast, the hard drive would whir like mad and–the computer would lock up.

So I uninstalled Comet Cursor.

And it hasn’t locked up since.

I went looking around on the Web to try and find out “huccome”. I didn’t really find a good answer, other than, “yeah, those durn computers will do that sometimes”. However, I ran across this.

http://users.rcn.com/rms2000/privacy/comet.htm

Did you know that Comet Cursor sends info about you to various websites as you surf? At least, that’s my understanding of what’s in the link. Certain websites that use Comet Cursor to allow you to use a cute custom-made cursor whenever you’re on their website are also gathering information about you.

And please don’t say, “Well, you should have known that before you installed it,” because it was the Better Half who installed it last May, and he thought it was just a way to get different cursors, but it didn’t seem to work like that. It would prompt you, “You need to be online to use Comet Cursor–are you online?”, so he just shrugged and left it on the desktop.

So, neener neener Comet Cursor! We are alive and well and surfing happily in Illinois, without you.

2

And I will save someone the trouble of having to point out the Control-Alt-Delete restart thingie, because I know about that, and that wouldn’t work either. Total absolute lockup.

3

Well DDG if you had that little pestulance installed, you might want to look into this…

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/aaw.html

Ad-aware seaches out and destroys “spyware” like Comet cursor and many others that come with shareware. It also looks out for evil cookies. and it’s free to home users!

I use it and I love it.

4

i hate hate hate hate hate hate hate comet cursor.

are you absolutely positive you’ve got it off of your computer? just to be sure, go to a website that has the damned thing and check. it may come back.

comet cursor is evil. i had it on my computer last year, and no matter how many times i un-installed it, it came back anytime i surfed through a page that used it. i finally had to get computer-genius-boyfriend (the previous one, i collect them, you know!) to go through the registry and delete every mention of that horrible program.

5

The ad-aware software goes thru rhe registry and all files to remove all instances of Comet Cursor and many other spyware files. you don’t need a compugenius boyfriend with it.

(Gawd I sound like a fricking comercial, but it does work well!)

6

ah, nifty, i hadn’t seen your post when making mine. i actually have the ad-aware, just got it after removing said evil program the hard way.

7

raging applause and cheering from the stands

WAHOO! LET’S HEAR IT FOR DUCK DUCK GOOSE!

HIP!
HIP!
HURRAY!!!

HIP! HIP! HURRAY!!!

HIP! HIP! HURRAY!!!

::continued whistles, whoops and hollers::

Don’t actually know a damn thing about Comet Cursor (except that it sounds like Evil Incarnate[sub]TM[/sub]).

I just like to cheer for anyone (non-expert) that takes the time and effort to figure something like this out on their own.

Good job, DDG!

:cool:

8

…instead of pestering Tech Support about it? Redtail, you don’t by any chance work in a tech support department somewhere, do you? :smiley:

9

Those Comet Curser spyware fucklicks. May they rot!

I recommend zonealarm ( http://www.zonealarm.com ), it will alert you whenever ANYTHING tries to access the net, and won’t let it access the net until you give it permission. The free version works excellently.

10

::Batting big, wide, innocent, children-with-animals eyes::
Who, me? Whatever gave you that idea? :stuck_out_tongue:

Nah, it’s not just that, not entirely, really. It just makes me happy to see people using their common sense and logical abilities instead of immediately crying for help. I think the world would be a better place if it happened more often. (My ‘non-expert’ qualification is because I expect techies to do this kind of thing without kudos. ;))

Yeah, ZoneAlarm is good. Unless you happen to run W2K on a dialup modem pool - then it doesn’t work for *%#^@!. I like Tiny Personal Firewall, but it’s less user-friendly.

11

I hate Comet Cursor. If you want to make sure you don’t ever get it again, open IE, go to tools, then Internet Options. Click on the Advanced tab. Scroll down to where it says “Enable install on Demand”. Uncheck that bad boy. Celebrate. And do get AdAware, it’s a darn good program.

12

Good for you, DDG. Besides - you should get BonziBuddy instead! It’s loads of fun, and your kids will love it! And it won’t lock up your computer, send all your credit card info to a web database in East Asscratchistan, and annoy the hell out of you until you start to mutter to yourself “I am the Angel of Bonzibuddy Death. The Time of Purification is at hand.” Nope, it won’t do any of those things.

And besides, everybody likes monkeys, right?

:smiley:

13

But it won’t stop you from getting Comet Cursor or any of it’s ilk.

Boscibo has the right idea. On top of that, go to the security tab in the same window boscibo referenced. In it, select custom and have ActiveX controls set to prompt instead of enabled.

In all my time surfing around the net, I’ve never had an instance where I actually wanted that funtion enabled. Having disabled, or prompted and then declined, has weeded out all kinds of trouble.