Vista or aol, help!

Hi,

I just bought an emachine which came loaded with lots of "goodies": Office, Norton, AOL (read "satan"), et al. I cannot download and use ANY free antivirus or firewall without internet access being altogether denied! I certainly am not so naive as to think that I can surf with immunity to spyware, viruses and malware, etc unprotected. But it seems that if I don't buy the ones that are "approved" by the computer, then I just cannot access the internet at all. I have tried removing in control panel, regedit and with jv16 powertools. Any advice is welcome!

Geminisoup

 

Ouch, have you tried to delete the boot up entries by typing 'msconfig' in the search box, clikc on the start up tab and uncheck what you need to, you might have to do this in safe mode.

 

Wow something smells like malware XD

If augiedoggie's advice doesn't help, you could try the malware forums.

I never imagined that any computer maker would do this.

 

I just tried the msconfig suggestion. When I rebooted, aol didn't start, but it also wouldn't let me connect to the inet. :-( Gonna go try the decrapifier now. Thanks for the advice, guys!

 

The Decrapifier removed emachines games, Big Fix and offered to remove Office, but no help otherwise. :-( Thanks, though. I will go to Malware and see if anybody has any ideas.