Normally I would not waste space on this site for software that does not pass muster. Nor would I devote any space to malicious software such as spyware, viruses or malware (although I will provide a list of helpful applications in the future). But, when I feel that software is evil enough to cause serious damage to computers, I feel it is necessary to alert every one to it…and since we are spidered by Google, this should help get the word out about a legitimate program that is malicious in many ways.

Background: a friend of mine is taking a college course for Office 2003. As a requirement for the class, they had to purchase the SAM Computer Literacy training course for Office 2003. This is produced by Thomson Course Technology. The software comes on three CDs, which take forever to install since there are so many small files included.

The first thing that set me off was that SAM only works in Internet Explorer; in other words, you are literally forced to use an unsecure, unsafe browser to run this program. Any competent software engineer does not design to individual browsers but, instead, should design to web standards. The reason it requires IE is due to needing ActiveX, another flaky technology that is used most often by spyware and malware; I personally keep it disabled whenever I have to stoop to the level of using IE in my development work.

The use of the Internet Evil Explorer browser was just the tip of the iceberg.

On my friend’s computer, SAM worked OK the first day it was used. On the second day, they couldn’t even log into the computer: dead keyboard. I make a trip across town and try every trick in the book, including a repair installation of Windows, which failed when I got to the screen where you enter your product key…I still could not type it in. Only a full, complete restoration of WinXP got the computer up and running again. And SAM was the only change to that computer!

Others in the same class had problems where the computer ran abnormally slow after installing SAM, and many reported the program would close unexpectedly, on its own, during use. The arrogant course instructor blamed it on the students, of course: “Oh, you all keep downloading that crap from the internet, all that free music, and your computers are all infected.” Ummm…get a clue, Mr. Instructor.

Last weekend, to get some homework done, we installed the program here, as I have an up to date computer I use for daily development work, and is known trouble-free.

Well, it was trouble-free.

After SAM was installed, I noticed that I could not reach Gmail through Internet Explorer: it complained that ActiveX was not installed (it is). Based on Google’s instructions, I tried re-registering the msxml3.dll file, but got an error message; same error message for all of the other “msxml*” files. Nice. And for awhile, I was able to use ActiveX on my friend’s login on this computer (the one on which SAM was installed), but not on any other accounts, including ones with full administrative privileges.

Even worse: disabling ActiveX also disables your ability to access the Windows Update site at Microsoft. Wonderful.

This morning I discover another problem: I can’t run my Services console. The “services.msc” file will no longer run, nor will any others. It complains about the file being missing (it’s there), or I don’t have permissions to run it (umm…I’m an administrator). Great. Just great. Now this program has taken the control of my computer out of my hands.

I have not yet fixed the problems, but I suspect one or two problems: 1) SAM deleted newer Windows XP files with older ones on the install CDs; 2) SAM messed up the registry. Fortunately, I run the ERUNT (Emergency Recovery Utility for NT), which saves a backup of my complete registry every day, so I will be able to go back and try a registry set prior to SAM being installed. I have already manually updated all of the MSXML file sets.

So, to end this little diatribe of mine, all I can say is this: do not install SAM on your computer! If you must use it, use an old junker computer you don’t care about. Just in this one class, multiple computers were messed up from installing this kludge. And mark my words, I’m keeping track of the hours I’ve spent trying to clean up my own computer, and intend to let the company know about the lost time and money. Thomson should be ashamed for developing such a harmful, unstable product to students who, in most cases, don’t know any better. Using IE to run these modules is pure laziness on the developers’ part; there are other ways to create a “shell” application that could use OLE to run the encapsulated versions of the Office applications used in the training. Charging as much as they do for this course, is a total sham as well.

As far as I’m concerned, this program is malware! Avoid at all costs.