On Guard II

Plugging in...

The reader may remember the battle with Comcast's Constant Guard in a previous post. When it overtook a keyboard and caused all the number keys across the top to type as the last letter pressed on the keyboard? Don't remember? To refresh your memory, read the previous On Guard! post.

Constant Guard is back with yet another keyboard fiasco. A Tutor's student (Salem State University) came to class with a baffling internet browser problem. In both the Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers, typing would not appear in the search box while on the Google website. The cursor moved across the box while typing was occurring, and the search box had an eerie light blue background with a series of dots as each key was pressed on the keyboard. If one pressed either the ENTER key on the keyboard or clicked on the Google Search button below the search box, the browser did indeed search for whatever was typed into the search box.

This was maddening for the student as they went about learning all the intricacies of Google searching without the capability of making sure the typing was correct in the search box. Interesting fact: the Chrome browser (by Google) did NOT have this strange invisible typing problem.

A bit of research brought about a quick answer: uninstall Comcast's Constant Guard and the keyboard's invisible typing will magically re-appear. Seems Comcast might have released their security suite a tad too early, and without thorough testing. Comcast used to provide a free copy of McAfee, then they switched to providing a free copy of Norton, both tried and true security products. Now they are offering their own product which was released sometime in August, 2011. Not everyone is encountering these problems, but if you do, remember where you read about the solutions - NOT on the Comcast website!!

ALWAYS REMEMBER: before calling for help - is it plugged in, is CONSTANT GUARD installed, and is it turned on?

Unplugged