ARRRRRRGH! Help me reclaim my computer from the RealOne Beast!!
 

So, I had Real Player 8.something on my computer. I've never used it much, but I occasionally would listen to classical music stations--even on dialup, a modest 28K audio-only stream comes though fine. I studiously ignored suggestions that I should update to a newer version of Real Player. But, now that I have my fancy shmancy DSL I figured I should. BIG mistake. This RealOne thing runs slower than molasses in January on my computer. (It's a 233MHz Pentium MMX with 256MB of RAM.)

But, even worse, it's opening when I don't want it too! When I download stuff from emusic.com using .RMP files, they try to open in RealOne!!! I've tried everything and even though the file types window claims .RMPs are associated with Zinf, RealOne still persists in opening. I'm used to just clicking the icon at emusic, telling IE to "open from current location," and boom, music download happiness. Any clues how to recify the situation? (Besides removing RealONE, which I might do if I can find the installer for the old version.)

Why can't there be a simple, efficient audio streaming client from Real? Does anybody value efficiency and simplicity in software anymore? I've always considered Microsoft to be the leader in bloat, but I may have to revise my thinking.

Uninstalling RealOne
 

Kbarger,

I uninstalled that beast ONCE on a Windows 2000 box.

It took registry Hacking to do it (HKLM\Software\Real etc...).

It also took some HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT file extension hacking.

In addition, I uninstalled, and deleted the directories.

Real makes evil software. They make Windows Media Player 7.1 look good by comparison, and that says a lot.

The only computer I saw it installed on was because the ex-Diginexus employee used it to view his videos from milfhunter.com (Definately not safe for work!).

I hope you have the mind to never install that beast again. Some things are better left uninstalled.

mbpark, you forgot to mention how it shits icons all over your computer. The last time I installed their shitty bloatware, I was still finding icons months later in places I'd never thought to look.

I will never ever ever make use of a site that uses Real media.

ditto, evil posessed format.

Like Quicktime.

Umm, OK, so which video player is NOT evil and posessed? Don't tell me it's Microsoft Media Player!! :3eye:

As much as I hate to say it, Microsoft Media Player is the least shitty of all of 'em. It's really too bad that something that should be as simple as streaming some fucking data over the internet has turned into such a godawful mess.

If it's not Real spewing icons all over the place, resetting file associations, and putting shortcuts to their system tray spyware in the registry, it's Quicktime asking every time I watch a damn video "Ya wanna register me now? Huh? How about now? Did I mention how much better Quicktime Pro is? Ya want a tour? Huh?"

WMP doesn't have to do any of that annoying shit because it's already a part of the operating system. Yeah, that's a pretty sad reason to pick it as the best, but if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.