Anthony Appleyard opened this issue on Jun 01, 2002 ยท 15 posts
Anthony Appleyard posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 1:14 AM
Attached Link: http://www.btopenworld.com/default
Power Loader Suit (Alien) (Poser) By: sunscape Feb 20, 2000 PC/Mac 4115 downloads That Freestuff entry shows its thumbmail currectly, from http://www.btinternet.com/~sunscape/psthumb.jpg , but when I tried to download it I got the page at this link instead.
Elsina posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 1:45 AM
I downloaded some item last week in freestuff and got comet cursor installed as an extra bonus, which is spyware.
audre posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 2:04 AM
yikes i hate that comet cursor crap. i went through a battle a while back getting it off my machine. thanks for the head's up on the power loader item.
Anthony Appleyard posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 4:00 AM
How do I tell if I have comet cursor in my PC? How would I get rid of it?
audre posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 4:46 AM
silly thing tries to put itself everywhere... on your desktop, and mostly in your 'window tray' ... in the little corner of your taskbar where those shortcuts are... also in your menubar itself. what happened to me is i visited a website of someone using it, and it snuck onto my machine... THEN added itself to my startup so that during my next reboot, it tried to install more crap. that is what got me pissed off about it. i finally went and unloaded everything manually off the hard drive you would know if you have it i think, at least i did :0
kbennett posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 4:50 AM
Attached Link: http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2677247,00.html
Comet Cursor may be spyware, but as such stuff goes, it's pretty harmless.
audre posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 5:18 AM
Mostly Harmless... ... Dent, Arthur Dent.
kbennett posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 5:23 AM
As in the late Dent Arthur Dent? Hang on, the Bistromatic drive is playing up again.
audre posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 5:37 AM
chuckle it's okay, just DON'T PANIC
Sipapu posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 8:31 AM
You'll definitely know if that wretched cursor shows up on your machine. I got it the same way Audre did and had to go through the same routine to remove it, including doing a regedit, which always scares the dickens out of me.
tonyamos posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 8:48 AM
Try using Ad-aware. That will generally clean any spyware off your machine, including registry entries. Just make sure that anything you are getting rid of is not used by anything else, i.e. in ad supported software. Find it here, www.lavasoft.de
Sipapu posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 8:53 AM
Unfortunately that comet cursor plagued me a couple of years ago, before I knew about Ad-aware. It's a great little app.
ronknights posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 1:15 PM
Unfortunately, some sites will always bug you until you install the Comet Cursor. An old friend of mine loved that cursed thing... I've noticed some Poser-related sites trying to foist that upon me. I got to them by following links from Renderosity. A screen comes up asking for permission to install Comet Cursor. The screen is often found hiding under other screens. I see it when I'm ready to shut down my computer, etc.
danidh posted Sat, 01 June 2002 at 6:25 PM
Attached Link: http://download.cometsystems.com/no_nag/nonag.asp
This link will take care of the problem.
Sipapu posted Sun, 02 June 2002 at 1:07 PM
Thanks, danidh. But if I recall correctly (from having written them back when this happened to me), Comet Cursor is still installed on one's computer. All this does is drop a cookie that prevents it from being activated, or something like that. Could be wrong, of course.