Problems with EarthLink Total Access

ok. tried everything that was suggested but nothing. I tried the control deal and no "remove" showed up. Can't drag it to the trash - won't allow it.

dolphin01 said:

ok. tried everything that was suggested but nothing. I tried the control deal and no "remove" showed up. Can't drag it to the trash - won't allow it.

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ok, will search around and see if I can find a fix. Will report back later.

http://www.capmac.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=4905&sid=ccc23362ab9f0398cd9c27635a074e70

This won't solve your problem but it shows how bad Earthlink treats people. They also had problems getting rid of Earthlinks junk.

LOL!!! That's what they told me -- that I will be given to their level 2 support people - tomorrow. I had something similar with AOL a long time ago. I downloaded some software and then I couldn't retrieve anything. I lost just about everything somehow.
I forgot all about that. I have learned my lesson!!! Never, ever again will I download anything from an ISP.
I will keep hounding them til they fix it or something happens. In fact, I'm going to bookmark that page and read some of those posts to them. I'm sure I'll be in a fight tomorrow.
They are going to try and toss me away. They don't want to deal with THEIR problems.
Any suggestions on other ISP's that support Macs? I have to have dial up because of where I live - can't get anything else.
And I need local access numbers for when traveling in case I can't get wireless service. Especially Kappa, Kauai.
I"m not giving up earthlink yet til this gets fixed somehow.
I'm surprised I got all that crap off my ibook.

Pretty much any standard ISP will work with a Mac. I use SBC Yahoo DSL here now called AT&T but same people. They give you a free Dial up accoun to use while away from your DSL. It works great with any computer. You just use the dialer built into OSX and put in the Phone number, Username and Password. Any ISP that uses a PPP dialer needs NO SOFTWARE at all to dial in to the net. Just use the PPP tab in Network and select the Modem then put in the settings. I hate the so called ISP's that make you install all that junk just to connect. Not needed with a real ISP.

GOOD LUCK tomorrow!!! I am still searching for a way around that stupid Total Access icon.

dtravis7 said:

Pretty much any standard ISP will work with a Mac. I use SBC Yahoo DSL here now called AT&T but same people. They give you a free Dial up accoun to use while away from your DSL. It works great with any computer. You just use the dialer built into OSX and put in the Phone number, Username and Password. Any ISP that uses a PPP dialer needs NO SOFTWARE at all to dial in to the net. Just use the PPP tab in Network and select the Modem then put in the settings. I hate the so called ISP's that make you install all that junk just to connect. Not needed with a real ISP.

GOOD LUCK tomorrow!!! I am still searching for a way around that stupid Total Access icon.

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Thanks a bunch for not giving up. I've been searching and searching the net and came across ALOT of BAD reviews on earthlink. Not only the advice to NOT download TA but earthlinks bad customer service. Not what I wanted to hear or read.
There are people out there who ended up with worse problems with their computers after downloading TA. Most of them stated that their computers went down to a crawl -- just like what happened to my ibook. But they were very old posts. I wish I had done my homework before downloading. It's not effecting my eMac in any way and when I do a search for TA, it shows 0. But I would really like that ugly stupid icon to be GONE.
I wish I could get DSL where I live but I can't. No service. We do have a satellite company but they don't offer any out of state access numbers when traveling. I'll have to keep checking around and see what I can get. Maybe we'll get DSL service soon.

dolphin01 said:

Thanks a bunch for not giving up. I've been searching and searching the net and came across ALOT of BAD reviews on earthlink. Not only the advice to NOT download TA but earthlinks bad customer service. Not what I wanted to hear or read.

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Yeah, that is a shame. It was a very different place when I worked there. That was about 4 years ago before they canned all of us and sent support overseas.
Still, even then the Total Access software was a waste and caused more problems than it was worth.
Look on the bright side though... you think it is a pain to get rid of it on a Mac? It is even worse in Windows. If I recall correctly, the TA software left something like 50+ unique registry tags in Windows that were near impossible to delete. The only way to truly get rid of it was to reinstall a clean install of Windows.

To get rid of it in Mac OS X, you may need to invoke root if the file says it is owned by such. I am not the most fluent with Terminal commands, but I am fairly certain this should work:
Open up your Terminal application.
With Terminal open, type "sudo rm -rf " without the quotes then drag the file that you want to delete. Hit enter. It'll ask for your root password. This should delete the file for you.

D3v1L80Y said:

Yeah, that is a shame. It was a very different place when I worked there. That was about 4 years ago before they canned all of us and sent support overseas.
Still, even then the Total Access software was a waste and caused more problems than it was worth.
Look on the bright side though... you think it is a pain to get rid of it on a Mac? It is even worse in Windows. If I recall correctly, the TA software left something like 50+ unique registry tags in Windows that were near impossible to delete. The only way to truly get rid of it was to reinstall a clean install of Windows.

To get rid of it in Mac OS X, you may need to invoke root if the file says it is owned by such. I am not the most fluent with Terminal commands, but I am fairly certain this should work:
Open up your Terminal application.
With Terminal open, type "sudo rm -rf " without the quotes then drag the file that you want to delete. Hit enter. It'll ask for your root password. This should delete the file for you.

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ok. found the terminal app. it won't allow me to type in a password -- what's the trick? It shows password but I can't type anything.

I found this site: http://macobserver.com/tip/2006/10/18.1.shtml
Would any of these programs be helpful? I don't want to download and try anything yet -- don't want to screw anything else up and cause more problems.
But if it's from Mac - I feel more comfortable.

These people at earthlink slay me. I'm sitting here on hold. NOw I'm on hold for a leve 3 tech. How many of these techs do they have??? LOL
Then I get automatically sent to an automated service and then disconnected. I called back and told them, "I"M NOT going away - deal with it!"
These people have no clue what to do. I told them all the bad reviews I have read on them and their stupid TA program and why don't think take it off their market scheme. What the guy told me...." I don't want to aggraviate you anymore than you already are." And put me on hold.
It really is a shame that there are programs out there that wreck havoc on computers and the company knows that and still they have it out there.

want to reinstall and start over

I'm on an eMac OSX 10.2 and I want to start all over and reinstall from the CD. If I can....
I have this nasty total access program that will not leave. I'm hoping that by reinstalling OSX - that will take care of it?
I've never done this before so I'm terrified of doing it. I will need to backup files I don't want lost. How can I do this easily? I have bookmarks I don't want to loose and my email folders and lots of folders on my HD I can't loose.
I've never done any backups so I don't know where to begin. Will I need to put each item individually onto a zip disk or..... ack - help.

So when you open the terminal and type what DevilBoy said, you get a password prompt but it will not let you type in the password?

dtravis7 said:

So when you open the terminal and type what DevilBoy said, you get a password prompt but it will not let you type in the password?

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correct.

I'm thinking about re installing but to backup my HD.... I've never done this before so I'm basically helpless. I'm doing searches on how to do it and what I will need but not finding much to help me.
I downloaded a program called carbon copy cloner but I can't figure out the **** thing. To pick a target source - it can't find anything. I have my zip opened up to transfer over onto that but it's not picking that up on the desktop.

If you choose Archive and Install when the installer first boots up, all your files and even settings will remain the same. Just a fresh copy of OSX will be installed. Only thing I am wondering is if that would get rid of that stupid Earthlink icon and folder. Doing an Archive and Install has always worked for me with OS problems though but this is an Earthlink install problem.

I have never had that password problem you are having using Terminal. I am pretty sure that would zap that icon. Maybe someone else can figure out the terminal password part for you as I am going out of town for the day. Good luck!

dtravis7 said:

If you choose Archive and Install when the installer first boots up, all your files and even settings will remain the same. Just a fresh copy of OSX will be installed. Only thing I am wondering is if that would get rid of that stupid Earthlink icon and folder. Doing an Archive and Install has always worked for me with OS problems though but this is an Earthlink install problem.

I have never had that password problem you are having using Terminal. I am pretty sure that would zap that icon. Maybe someone else can figure out the terminal password part for you as I am going out of town for the day. Good luck!

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That's what I was thinking -- I don't think that will get rid of the icon - choosing archive and install. I popped in the CD for re installing the emac and didn't see an archive -- is it in the package somewhere?

It is not too scary to do this, but you will need to tell us which programs you are using for email and web browsing, since the locations of the files of interest may change.

In general, you will find that most stuff you are interested in lives in your Documents folder hierarchy and in your Library folder hierarchy. If you are using iTunes, you will want to include the Music folder hierarchy and of course if you are using iPhoto, you will want to include your Pictures folder hierarchy. Being new to Mac as of OS X 10.4 (Tiger) I don't know if everything is in the same places in 10.0, but this is a start at least.

In 10.4, if you are using Mail for email, you wil find all the mailboxes, messages, etc. in your Library/Mail folder set. If you are using Safari for browsing, all the bookmarks etc. will be in Library/Safari.

So, in general your process would be to:
- get an external hard drive (easiest) or multiple ZIP disks (harder, because you have to keep track of what went where)
- copy out your Documents, Music, Pictures and the parts of your Library folder that are of interest to the hard drive. Don't do the whole Library folder as that will bring over ALL your current settings and preferences, and I suspect that something in there is the problem that is driving you to do the reinstall in the first place.
- detach and turn off the hard drive

- Re-install 10.0

- plug back in the hard drive and copy your saved folders back.

Good luck.

OMG!!! I figured it out myself and it is GONE, GONE, GONE!!!
what I had to do was go into the netinfo manager and enable root. It was not enabled to begin with. Then I had to log out and re log in as root and give it a password. Once that was done, the computer recognized me as "root" and I was able to throw away that nasty total access folder! After that was done, I logged out and logged in as me.
DONE.
Big sigh and relief. NEVER again will I download something like that.

Guess I'll have to get an external HD. Since I don't have one. I'm running Mail (I think1.2) I'm not on the emac right now. And using camino.
Thanks for the info - that does help.

I use a GMail account sometimes to backup little things. Like your mail and camino bookmarks, you could email them to yourself if you have a GMail acct cos they give you a huge 2GB + of storage space for free. Of course anything on the GMail server is theirs for the snooping too, so it's not totally secure like that. But Google can look at my emails cos they're not very interesting or personal.