Compaq's unwanted home page hijacker

Hello, fellow Geeks. I Recently bought a Compaq 6000 series laptop which seems to have come from the factory with a built-in home page redirector.

No matter what I enter under I.E. Tools>Internet Options>General tab>set homepage, I end up (despite Norton's initial fussing and warnings about it happening) having it hijacked to http://ie.redirect.hp.com/svs/rdr?TYPE=3&tp=iehome&locale=EN_US&c=64&bd=presario&pf=laptop. This is some AOL page which takes quite awhile to open, and which I wouldn't want as my homepage even if I were an AOL subscriber (I use an independent dial-up ISP).

Frankly, I think these sort of tactics in which a manufacturer includes numerous self-serving hurdles to be overcome before the consumer can use the product the way he or she intends, lie in a dark gray area at the outer fringes of integrity and respect for customer interests.

Anyway, anyone know what I must do (beyond what I have already tried) to stop Compaq and AOL from having their way with my IE settings?

 

Copy the contents of the Quote Box below to Notepad. Then click File and then Save As. Change the Save as Type to All Files. Name the file iefix.reg and then click save. (make sure you save it somewhere you can find it. Saving it to your Desktop may make that easy.)

Double-click on the iefix.reg file on your desktop (or locate it with Windows Explorer and double click on it if not saved to the Desktop) and when it prompts to merge, click YES!