Listening to the Voices in My Head

I had posted that I had been looking for an alternative to ArcSoft TotalMedia Theater because of Windows Rollup screwed the pooch.

Enter Aurora Blu-Ray Player

Now, Aurora claims to be "Try before buy", but you really can't tell if blu-ray playback is good as their HUGE frigging watermark covers the playback, giving you no clue as to whether it works well or not. Only option is to fork over $39 to see.

Now, what it does is play the MTS file, not really the entire disc, just the movie file. It makes a rudimentary ‘menu’ that allows you to select language and scenes. That would be fine by me, HOWEVER...

Even though it does work, this program keeps making Windows system changes. I have AutoPlay for all media set to TAKE NO ACTION. But every time I start Aurora, it changes that to auto open BluRay/DVD/Video Discs. I have gone into the autoplay menu, and have manually selected TAKE NO ACTION, then saved. Launch Aurora, and it overwrites those settings.

There is nothing in the Aurora preferences that prevent it from being chosen as default, and it keeps changing Windows settings.

Any program that makes unwanted system changes is malware. I have been sending messages to them about this, but have yet to get even one reply. I think they know of this, but can't or won't do anything about it, so their program has earned the label of Malware. And I’ve uninstalled it using YourUninstaller to remove all traces.

I had a bit of a boggle a few days ago. Was installing an update to something (there were three candidates) and I missed the sneaky "hey, look let's put this crap adware in here" and one of them installed it.

Malwarebyes to the rescue. Scanned and removed the adware/malware. Other than answering "Because they can", what possesses people to do this crap? It serves no purpose, didn't cost me any time or effort (scanned computer overnight, deleted the crap, took me all of 5 seconds) and just guarantees that 1: If I ever do update their software again, which I doubt, I will be watching it like a hawk.

I did send each 'suspect' a harshly worded email (no foul language) about this. I didn't tell them they were one of three, because if I did, each one would have said it was the OTHER program. Don't think I will get an answer, regardless.

(And a quick note to smarmy smartasses, No, I don't want a Mac. To me, having a Mac is like having a car and only being able to drive on 30% of the roads)