Is this a RealOne problem or something else?

I've experienced a very strange problem on my PC at home recently. This runs Windows98 SE (with all the current MS updates), and I always have my personal firewall & AV scanner active whenever I access the net. About 2-3 weeks ago I installed RealOne player (the free version) and have used it with no problems, although I did instruct my firewall to block its attempts to access the net. Yesterday, some things stopped working properly - specifically double clicking on a Word document caused the PC to hang, as did opening Start/Settings/Control Panel. What I don't understand is that activating Word via a shortcut and opening the same document worked fine! I have made sure my AV scanner is up to date, done a manual scan, checked for trojans all of which came back clean. The symptoms were repeatable and persisted after a hard boot. Having drawn a blank there, I adopted standard procedure and uninstalled the last bit of software I had installed (RealOne) - I made sure all its Registry entries were removed as well. Having done that, everything works fine again.
Do I have some virus that my AV scanner doesn't know about (McAfee), is it something to do with RealOne (I know it does some odd things with file associations), or something else?

Any comments would be most welcome ....

Strange I use Real and do not allow internet access for the program, I havent had any problems with my copy could it be you got a bad download you may want to try the download from www.cnet.com or www.zdnet.com for the most part the downloads are clean from them. Other than that I`m not sure why your program tripped your computer. :confused:

I cannot help you with your experience, but I just want to say, I downloaded the same RealOne player you are talking about and everynow and then the firewall (Sygate) says it (RealOne) wants to access the internet to send a message to message.realone.com or some crap like that. It absolutely gives me the shits. I mean the program doesn't start when the PC starts, but just everynow and then it does this.

Anyways, after a few times of this crap, I just uninstalled it cos I couldn't put up with it anymore. It's just stupid, why do they need it to send messages to em...damn bastards!!

:)

Greg

Not sure where I downloaded it from, so maybe I'll try another copy.
In reply to hot_ice's comments about RealOne trying to send messages to wherever, I saw the same thing. I also found some odd entries in the registry, which I think means that some part of RealOne does activate at boot time !!
Which is why I uninstalled it, and restored a backup copy of the Registry :)

Real player was great but then they came out with REAL ONE the (virus). It trys to take over the playing of every sound file on your computer. Half the time it doesn't even suppport the file it is supposed to play, and the ones it does support are played crappy with lousy controls. It is also ard to kill once it starts.

I found a copy of the original Real Player basic (v8) on a CD. Still using my personal firewall (Sygate) to block access to a couple of real.com sites, but this doesn't seem to cause a problem with this version. Just in case anyone experiences anything simillar ...

If you run the control center in the system tray and your firewall is set to block all RealOne traffic it will cause a system to hang. It overloads the winsock so to speak. It sends out requests and recieves no reply, so it continues repeatedly to attempt a conection. So disable the systray applet for it. Then in your firewall just disable the requests it makes calling home only to that ip at Real Networks. The you'll still be able to access online content elsewhere and won't have to worry about the control ceter reporting your stats to Real. Hope this helps.