List of installed maleware with trial install

Hi,  I just tried to install the trial on my clients computer.  Ive been a long time user of 100%,  but when I noticed the screens in the installer with other software I canceled the install.   alcohol didnt install but a bunch of other programs did.

Now this beta image type software keeps launching and every link in browsers show popups and adds for things like monster.com.   I couldnt even get to the support section on your website since it changed all of the links.

Do you have a list of exactly what was installed and how i can remove all this maleware that was installed  by your installer and un hijack my clients computer.

Nothing is supposed to be installed without the user's permission. Are you sure that this stuff is from Alcohol? Maybe you can see it in the "Add/Remove Programs" tab (and remove it from there)?

We cant provide a list of 3rd party software as these are not exactly included in Alcohol installer, they are installed live and according to user region by the stub installer / downloader (the 1st installer you got) that is provided to us by a 3rd party company specialized in this.

I suppose with the user's permission?

''The user has the chance to decline to install all the bundled software and when that is done nothing apart from the program will be installed.''

That's not entirely correct.

The installer, apart from the unwanted prgrams mentioned above, also installs Safe File Advisor without asking for permission or offering an opt-out. An attempt to uninstall SFA produces the warning that it is needed by Alcohol and uninstalling the one will necessitate uninstalling the other as well - which is total nonsense.

I have no opinion about SFA. It may be a brilliant and indispensable program, it may be malware or crapware. But the fact remains that I did not ask for it or permit it being installed.

John

This happens only with the trial version, SFA installation is optional for the retail version.

That does not make it OK, I'm afraid. If the user decides to buy Alcohol and turn his trial version into the registered version, will SFA be removed upon request? Is its installation even acknowledged? Very likely not.

No additional software, certainly no software from other sources, should be installed without at least informing the user, I found no mention of SFA on the Alcohol-Soft website. The trial installer also remained silent on the subject. How many people will not even discover it is there?

I find the practice of silently adding unasked for and unnecessary software to a trial install, and subsequently attempting to prevent removal of that additional software by using the main program as a hostage, in extremely bad taste.

John

You can't upgrade the trial version, you have to uninstall it before installing the retail version of Alcohol when you buy it, in this case SFA will also be uninstalled.

Thank you for the information, Charalambos. I shall, however, decline to put it to the test..My doctor always tells me that alcohol is bad for me, and although he never yet referred to SFA I have now decided that he may well be right.

John

Well, the decision is yours.

The user has the chance to decline to install all the bundled software and when that is done nothing apart from the program will be installed.

I beg to differ. Decline all the "bundled software offers" and nothing gets installed.

I just put together XP computer for old games and I was happy to see "Alcohol 120% Free Edition 2.0.2.5830 FE" available. However, the experience was sobering in bad way. Countless 3rd party crapwares bundled and every one of them had to be declined in various ways. At the end, the "downloader" just quietly closed down an it did not install Alcohol, after all.

So, I decided to get Alcohol 52% FE instead. After all, I don't need more for that computer.

Guess what? Same experience as with Alcohol 120% FE. Avoiding crapware, but Alcohol never got installed!

One might guess that in order to get either version Alcohol installed, at least some crapware must be allowed to worm into computer. No, I'm not going to try!

As the computer is intended to pure offline gaming and never to be online after finalising installation, I don't intend to install any extra software to eat resources.

That includes AV, firewall, most of the MS updates (useless for this computer) and specially crapware.

Being lifetime licensee of Alcohol 120%, this experience was quite unexpected and unwelcome.

I'm hoping someone somewhere just made honest mistake and it will be fixed soon.

It's already PITA to have to decline several of those "offers", but one would expect to finally have intended software installed...

Unfortunately, installer for older version did not work any more. One reason more why online installers are bad idea.

The initial installer has to download Alcohol's installer from the internet, did you have an active internet connection when you tried installing it?

Also you can use Alcohol's retail version on multiple computers by switching activations (and buy additional activations if you want), have a look here:

http://forum.alcohol...-on-another-pc/

Edited by Charalambos, 25 December 2013 - 10:06 PM.