Uniblue
*not* an Option Uniblue
*not* an Option
Most people who read these pages are quite familiar with
how their computers work and are very much into software that will help protect,
clean and stabilize their computers. Old blackdog, for example, has a ton of
software and hardware to protect his computer, and has also done considerable
tweaking to make it run faster and smoother. But sometimes, even those of us who
are intimately familiar with the inner workings of these beasts, and the
accompanying software, get hung out to dry anyway, so here’s a warning for
you.
In a recent issue of a very good computer magazine, there
was a small product intro article about a little piece of software that could be
downloaded from Uniblue. Theoretically, it would give you an easy way to
determine what items were running in the background under Windows XP and help
you disable those unnecessary ones to speed up your computer. Not thinking that
Win XP provides tools to do just that, I downloaded it. I tried it, found I’d
already done all that through Win XP, and uninstalled it. What I did not know,
however, was that Uniblue’s other product, Registry Booster, was piggybacked
onto the other download and came along for the ride. The company denies this, of
course, but I got it somehow and sure didn’t hit the download button for it
since I already have three Registry products that I find exceptionally helpful.
After trying to uninstall it, delete it, bomb it off the
face of the Earth, it would not go away. Heck, it took me 20 minutes to even
find out where it was located. So I contacted Uniblue, who said, of course, that
I must have downloaded it (I didn’t). However, that point was moot. The
important thing was to get it out of there. So I followed their instructions and
downloaded it for real this time, and then uninstalled it. That should have
solved the problem. It didn’t.
Every time I rebooted my computer, Win Patrol, a highly
effective piece of security software, kept telling me new software was being
introduced into my computer and did I expect it. I kept saying “no,” only to
get the same message over and over, so I finally said “yes” and put that
part of the issue to rest. However, that was by far not the end of the problems.
Today, after three months of fighting with this problem, I
have accepted the inevitable. It appears that Registry Booster left one line in
my Registry. So now every time I scan the Registry with any of my related
software products, I get the same message—day after day: Missing Startup
Software. In other words, Registry Booster left a permanent line in the
Registry. I remove it; it comes back—forever and ever and ever.
This, my friends, is NOT the way a company should operate.
They even sent me a “key” that would permanently delete the line from my
Registry, so they said. It did not. It’s not the most critical problem, but it
is a horrible annoyance. And definitely it should NOT be replicating this
Registry value day after day after day.
So my advice? Don’t visit Uniblue, and a reminder to
avoid Kaspersky Anti-Virus also (as you will find in another article on this
site). Kaspersky’s trial anti-virus software package destroyed my entire
operating system, causing me to spend two days rebuilding it. And to this day
it’s still not quite right and won’t ever be. It also affected part of my
Office 2003 Professional suite. Uniblue is invasive. Their claim is: “No one
else ever had this problem.” Well I do, and so blackdog’s advice is simply
to avoid problems by not visiting those sites.
Blackdog
