EBOT warning
Snarf
Digital River Systems promotes a little program called EBOT for downloading
software from their site. In some cases, if you purchase software online
for a download from a software manufacturer, you will be sent to this online
company's site for the download after the purchase is complete.
Initially I had no intention of using this to negotiate the software
download, and an alternative was presented as an "HTTP download". Every
time I tried the alternative, IE would "crap the bed", and I would be forced
to close IE (version 5.01). Finally after trying 3 times unsuccessfully
with "HTTP download", I was forced to allow EBOT to be installed to see if
that would allow the download. All worked well, it gave me my serial
number, blah-blah.
That was yesterday.
Today, I had a problem with e-mail downloading. Deactivated NAV e-mail
scan, and it worked fine. Believe Symantec takes their email scanner server
down on Sunday for maintenance. This happens from time to time. So I
wasn't too concerned.
Then I selected to open the browser via MS Outlook 2K, the homepage (MSN)
started slowly opening, but never completed after over a minute. I noticed
that the top menu on IE was missing (File, Edit, View, Favorites, Tools,
Help). I selected the STOP button on the lower menu with no response from
IE, and the lower bar still indicated an attempt to finish downloading the
page.
Usually, in a case like this, I would hit ctrl-alt-del to kill the
unresponsive program (IE in this case), but for some unknown reason (gut
intuition), I hit start/shutdown/restart. Now here's the weird part, with
no protest from Windows, it closed and restarted with IE, Outlook, Outlook
Newsreader open on the desktop. I have no problem with many applications as
I have 256MB of memory.
Upon restart, and no protest from scandisk by the way, all opened normally
on the desktop. I headed straight for EBOT in the system tray and told it
to close. Immediately the modem cued up and logged into my ISP. I
immediately closed the connection with Sygate. I tried a couple of more
reboots, and same scenario. It called up my ISP everytime.
It gets even weirder (if thats a word).
Norton Cleansweep and Internet Sweep are always open in my system tray. I
could find no installation of Ebot, but I did find an activeX install FOR
ebot. Left that alone and went to add/remove programs, and EBOT was in it.
Norton Cleansweep thought I was installing program when I selected to remove
EBOT from add/remove programs, and monitored it as an installation and I
save that. Then I went to Internet CleanSweep from SafeSweep, and removed
the still existing activeX install for EBOT, and saved a backup.
All works fine now.
--
Regards,
Snarf
George M. Winford
Thank you for sharing your EBOT experiences. You likely will have helped
someone else.
--
geo., MS MVP (Desktop Systems), MCP (Windows 98)
"Snarf" <coff...@spynet.comedy> wrote in message
news:8ksm6i$fef$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net...
Boyd Porter
The easiest for me was, Run/msconfig/startup/uncheck Digital River eBot.
Therefore, it never runs unless I double click on the desktop icon. It does not
give me any problems, I just do not want an unused TSR runnng.
Have a nice day!
bp3
--
Boyd Porter
La Vergne, TN
"Support your local locksmith. Lose a key."