Streamlined Ethics Test

My streamlined alternative to the University of Illinois ethics test...

Do you agree to be excellent to each other?

PC Troubleshooting

I have been watching Engrenages (translated to "Spiral", but apparently this doesn't do the original name justice) for a few weeks now and really enjoying it, via Netflix. Then suddenly last night the Netflix site started showing really cheesy ads -- "you are the millionth customer"-type dreck, and really annoying ad videos with loud soundtracks that couldn't be closed. After thinking for a while that Netflix has finally lost its collective mind, it occurred to me that this could be a virus. (For the record, the problem appeared with Chrome on a family PC running Windows 8 [Insert automatic 3-page rant on the lunacy of radically changing a user interface in daily use by hundreds of millions of people here].)

After searching around and finding hints of rootkit hijack of the machine and resigning myself to hours of reinstalling the OS, or trying various unknown 3rd party solutions for even more hours, I checked the install/uninstall program list -- Bob only knows how I found that in the oh-so-helpful 32-vehicle pile-up that is Windows 8's new user interface -- for suspicious 3rd party programs. Lo and behold, a number of suspicious candidates showed up: price peep and info atom being prominent among them.  Uninstalling them seems to have resolved the problem for now. I'm assuming they were installed as baggage for some free app.

I hope this information saves someone else some time and/or heartache...