[Four Stickers]

I'm helping a friend with her computer. She was on AOL dialup and felt that it was slow. She had tried downloading Acrobat 8 and it never came down completely even though it said DOWNLOAD COMPLETE. So she decides to change to Affinity which offers a faster dialup. So I'm telling her to open IE (something she had never done with AOL) and it just immediately closes on her. I disconnect from dialup and IE will open and stay open. So I see that there are proxy settings (209.210.176.44 Port 8888). I try deleting the proxy setting and when I click OK, IE closes down. Go back in and the proxy setting is back. She had an even older dial-up connection before AOL and when I looked at the config of that connection I saw this same proxy setting in there. So I deleted that old dial-up connection. But, still, that proxy setting is there. She has a program installed called Proxy Watch. She does not know how it got there but she said it had been there a long time. I tried to remove it, but it requires a password which we do not know.

So I try a different route and downloaded Firefox (of course all downloading I am doing from my own PC because her PC will not completely download even a 2MB file). This did work but it is VERY SLOW. Slower than what she had with AOL. Not sure if the proxy setting was also copied to Firefox, I'll have to check that out.

I just couldn't let the IE problem die. When I turned on the "Use HTTP 1.1 through proxy connections," then IE would at least stay open when on the internet. But it also was VERY SLOW. We called Affinity and they knew nothing about Proxy Watch and they said we should not have those proxy settings. They also told her that she still didn't have the accelerator running and to download it, but of course the download fails so I am having to download it for her.

Sorry for the lengthy explanation. My questions are, how do I remove these proxy settings from IE? Do you think that Proxy Watch is doing this? Do you know how to remove Proxy Watch without the password? Affinity also thinks that she probably has a firewall running that is causing her downloads to fail or timeout. What do I look for to see if she does have a firewall? Her system has good performance other than internet. Should I check for malware?

Thanks so much for your advice! Please give as many suggestions as you can since it's not my own PC and I'll have to visit my friend to try them out.

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I think Proxy Watch is an Internet filter provided by the IP. Someone may not know this at your IP unless it was provided as a package install via AOL. Searching how to remove it or at least getting into it. If it was set by a parent, then the password will be needed. The proxy settings may have been put in each browser by this program. Will get back to you on this unless someone posts an answer first.

As to the slowness. Dialup isn't alway that quick on file downloads. Try running Disk Cleanup using the Hard Drive tools. This should clean out all caches, temp files and compress the old unused files. Also, remove all the old Restore Points if there. After this, run the Defragmentation program.

Then see what the DL speeds are: McAfee Speed Test (One of many available on 'Net)

Check results against what she is paying for by ISP. Given DSL a thought?

Ron

P.S. Is that Affinity or Affinity4 she's using? This about filtering from Affinity4: Internet Filtering. FAQs.

Seems they may also have provided an outdated browser. This may be related to what she has: Proxy Watch. Don't know if this would be helpful: Proxy Watch Uninstaller.

Edited by Major Payne, 09 August 2007 - 05:26 AM.

[Major Payne]

I think Proxy Watch is an Internet filter provided by the IP. Someone may not know this at your IP unless it was provided as a package install via AOL. Searching how to remove it or at least getting into it. If it was set by a parent, then the password will be needed. The proxy settings may have been put in each browser by this program. Will get back to you on this unless someone posts an answer first.

As to the slowness. Dialup isn't alway that quick on file downloads. Try running Disk Cleanup using the Hard Drive tools. This should clean out all caches, temp files and compress the old unused files. Also, remove all the old Restore Points if there. After this, run the Defragmentation program.

Then see what the DL speeds are: McAfee Speed Test (One of many available on 'Net)

Check results against what she is paying for by ISP. Given DSL a thought?

Ron

P.S. Is that Affinity or Affinity4 she's using? This about filtering from Affinity4: Internet Filtering. FAQs.

Seems they may also have provided an outdated browser. This may be related to what she has: Proxy Watch. Don't know if this would be helpful: Proxy Watch Uninstaller.

Edited by Major Payne, 09 August 2007 - 05:26 AM.

[wendy k. walker]

Hi Major Payne,

No fair Boo...that's a fifteen year old boy trying to help his fourteen year old girlfriend circumvent something her parents stuck in that PC to keep her off of porn sites.

I didn't think you guys helped people get around things that were locked up by passwords.

Wendy

[Major Payne]

I didn't provide any help to get around anything locked up by a password. All this information is provided via the Internet and was found with a simple search. I hope you are not making assumptions that they are wanting to go to porn sites as there are plenty of other reasons to monitor teens' activities. Any parent worth their name of parent will always be checking whether this program is active or not and will be closely monitoring their teens' computer activity. If program is missing, then they know what to do.

Nowhere in the OP profile is there information on age/gender, etc..I do not know the age of the OP because I do not know them personally. The writing content of the post indicates to me a much older individual that is having a problem. I have to provide some trust here when replying and I may miss one or two, but I don't need to be called on it unless you really have a valid reason and proof.

Ron

[Four Stickers]

No worries. I'm a mother of four girls (four sisters where the word sisters gets messed up by the young ones and it turns in to stickers). Perhaps Wendy is the 15 year old boy waiting for you to tell me how to remove it.
Now, you all know I'm just joking around...

Major Payne, thank you so much for replying and sorry for my delay. I did try the clean-up things that you suggested (plus doing them on my mother-in-law's PC with a similar problem, so THANK YOU). I told her to call Affinity4 to see what they had to say about her dial-up performance (I also use dial-up and I could tell a huge difference. And we would both love DSL but are too far out in the boonies.) She called Affinity4, they told her how to remove AOL. After removing AOL and rebooting, her PC hangs after showing the desktop. I found other posts where people had a similar situation when removing AOL. Anyway...I tried what I could (safe mode, removing startup items and run items) to get booted up enough to write her personal files to CD, but I could never get it to recognize that there was a writable CD in the drive. I told her that her "friend" minutes were gone at this point. She was probably relieved because she was having to watch my four girls while I jacked with her PC.

So she's taking it to another friend who is going to get her files off of there and then reload the whole system.

So, I won't need to know about Proxy Watch, but I will say that although I didn't help her in the end, I did learn a lot about malware, internet filters, automatic update, etc! Plus I had no idea there were sites like this and I think it is just AWESOME. So when I have a problem with my own PC, I'll know where to go!

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond!

[wendy k. walker]

Hi Four Stickers, Rats... you blew my cover. Sorry about that, I was just joking around too Boo. Glad to see that you have gotten your problem kind of figured out.

Hi Major Payne, Sorry Boo, I didn't mean to imply that you were doing wrong here. Its just that almost any time that I see a post where someone is asking for information on how to get around a password the only thing that you guys will tell them is that you don't help people defeat passwords.

Sorry if my lame attempt at levity upset you guys.

Wendy

[Johanna]

Four Stickers:
We hope you come back any time when a question comes up. I'm closing this topic since you got the problem resolved.
Wendy:
You could be a real asset to this board if you would stop and take a deep breath before you click "submit".
Johanna