[notrom]

I signed up to ntl's free broadband trial last year. Partly because of their appalling customer service I did not subscribe to their pay service and was disconnected by ntl when the trial ended.



While I was with ntl, whenever I opened Internet Explorer a message reading 'Detecting proxy settings...' appeared in the bottom left corner of IE for some minutes before opening my ISP home page. Even though Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m now disconnected I still get this message and now my dial-up access to the internet is extremely slow (eg last Sunday I was reading some of the papers on line and was taking 3-4 minutes to open each new newspaper article) as are downloading speeds.



I have checked with my ISP that my Internet Explorer settings are correct, and Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve defragged and done up-to-date scans with Ad-aware and Spybot. The only thing I can conclude is that the ntl installation has left something on my machine thatââ‚ ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s causing a conflict and slowing things down. Unfortunately, if this is so, I canââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t find anything to delete/uninstall. Canââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t face having to contact ntl again, does anyone have any comments/suggestions/help? Am not very computer literate, so please keep any advice simple!!!!



PS

As for ntl, I found the actual broadband connection very good and canââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t recall any problems. Itââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s customer service (surely a contradiction in terms!) that was the problem. Things got off to a bad start from day one: in advance of the ntl engineerââ‚à ƒâ€šÃ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s visit I moved a bookcase standing against a wall where the engineer would lay the ntl cable. The engineer took about ½ hour to install everything and left me to plug in the modem and run the installation disk; nice chap, I thought, even replaced the bookcase for me.



When I realised I didnââ‚ ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢t have a code number to enter I tried to ring ntl: no dialling tone. I assumed there was a software conflict and rang BT engineer on another line: BT told me my original line may be damaged. Pulled aside the bookcase to reveal the BT line clearly severed and hanging loose; in other words, the engineer knew heââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢d cut my line but instead of admitting his mistake hid the evidence and made good his escape before I found out. Things went downhill after that. Perhaps a dozen phone calls with 30-40 minute waits listening to the most irritating music Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve ever heard (punctuated at regular intervals by an idiotic womanââ‚ƚ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s voice trying to flog me stuff Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve less than zero interest in) while I waited to be connected to an operator. All the usual unfulfilled promises outlined regularly on this forum; I wonââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t bore you further except to say Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢ve never dealt with any company as incompetent as ntl. (incompetent is the charitable way to describe ntl; Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m rapidly coming to the conclusion that lying and duplicitous are the accurate and appropriate words to be used to describe ntl).