Vongo is basically a video download service that provides movies on demand to personal computers and portable media devices. Vongo Membership allows members access to their movie library but any of the recent movies are considered pay-per-view and not accessible under your membership. So I sign up for the standard $9.99 plan that’s supposed to allow me to view, download any movie and 3 of the movies I searched for at random were pay-per-view – i.e. no free viewing. To view those movies, you pay $3.95. The free movies that you can download ‘expire’ after a finite (3-months?) amount of time and so you can’t keep them forever – You are licensing the movie not really purchasing them and that’s fine
So I download Vongo to see what it’s all about – Sign up, log in and start downloading movies. Every time I try to download a movie, it schedules the download for another time instead of downloading right away. After I got past that, I decided to try out the live Starz stream while I wait for the movie to download and I get the following lovely error message:
That was it for me – I uninstalled the application and canceled my membership. I hate companies that make you call and talk to someone about canceling your membership. The web is good enough when you want to take my money but not good enough when I want a refund. The person on the phone was very polite and pleasant and I got my refund right away. And the final straw was the uninstaller – I try to uninstall the application and it dies as some file is locked because the player is still running in my task tray. Why is the uninstaller not smart enough to detect any running instances that would have to be killed before it can proceed? I guess I’ll wait for the Google Video announcement tomorrow at CES to see if their application is any better. As much as iTunes sucks, it still is a pretty decent platform for music and video.
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I officially give up . . . Vongo Wins. #14 above only works for a short time. Each and evertime I unclick ISUSPM it works for just a few days and then is back. Usually after loading an update of one thing or another.
I am tempted to go to the VONGO website and download and reinstall the CRAP and then recheck ISUPM. Has anyone tried this and if so, did it make the HP/COMPAQ “happy” so that it did not try to reinstall VONGO at bootup.
Just finished eradicating an HP notebook of the Vongo craplet. Deleted all traces of Vongo from the registry (after exporting it first) and HD; so far so good. Didn’t make any changes to the InstallShield UpdateService Update Manager.
You people suffer too much trying to delete Vongo. Here’s what has worked for me:
- stop Vongo client (using the its icon in the system tray);
- stop Vongo service (e.g. via Task Manager’s Services tab);
- uninstall Vongo via Uninstall a program in Control Panel
Using Windows Vista.
Vongo is the worst….I can’t believe it is that bad….I litterally wasted an hour of my life. Streaming errors all over the place…..could not even figure out how to contact cutomer service…..
It looked so cool…I was excited about the product….
On top of that…I am relatively patient….those product managers need to get fired….and if any resume ever comes across my desk that was an exec responsible for such crap I will make sure it goes in the garbage….
I am sick and tired of HP forcing Vongo on us. I am calling for action so that HP can taste the result of their irresponsible action by stuffing all these useless programs on the computer we buy, causing us precious time and disk space. I urg everyone who want to get rid of Vongo to call HP support for direction, even if you have already gotten it from this site. HP wants to earn extra $$ by stuffing junks on our computer, I want HP to spend $$$ for their action. It costs HP $$$$ to answer a service call. So, we will all call HP — that way, they know for the few $$ that they eary, they will have to pay $$$. You can find the HP support number from their web site. Make sure that you call them separately for each and every pieces of software that you have not asked for on your computer….. Happy calling
It’s not so much the fact that it reinstalls itself that bothers me, but the question is: where the hell is it installing from?
I find setup files for Vongo and delete them, but it still runs the installer. What is the source?! So irritating!
I have a brand new HP Pavillion dv9000 Laptop. Vongo is a nightmare! It has all but corrupted a computer I paid $2,500.00 for and have only had for 1 month. According to Vongo, after there most recent update they are no longer supporting a 64 bit Operating System. I urge all of you unhappy with Vongo to call your computer support a least once a day only if for 2 min. Start a campain to have this disastorous service not to be pre-installed on ANY computer systems. We will a least help future generations of computer buyers more happy AND less likely to JUMP OFF A BUILDING!!!
Hi All,
Vongo is the reason I won’t consider buying another HP. I worked on killing it for 2 days, finally resorted to downloading a fix registry cleaner and it killed my laptop. I had it rebuilt and Vongo back taking up 21 megs in my process panel of the task manager. So basically I know that everytime I use this computer I’m waiting for Vongo to load and then it takes away part of my productivity. Good times…not. Some computer maker is going to realize that people don’t want a machine preloaded to be a great big boon to advertisers and other companies.
If you don’t like to fly, Amtrak is giving away a free month of Vongo, and since HP and
Microsoft have some pre-installed agreements that cause crashes (see infra) just for
the cha;;enge i’m trying the free Vongo (knowing I have a personal geek hacker backup).
Just wanted to let you know that earlier this year Staples had discounts when one bought a HP Pavion and System Mechanic Pro 7 (which I really like because it does everything, defrag, system maintenance, special uninstall and other tools and data recovery plus lotsa extras and I haveMcAfree and the even worse Norton which always leave traces, fight uninstall and Norton seems to miss the virus and trojan one pays to get rid of).
Anyway, Bill Gates Vista defender refuses to recognize Iolo Tech System Mech Pro 7 at start up, then when uninstalling the free Norton trial(nightmare nightmare) the battle between the new Vista and the Iolo (which is not a partner of Big Bill G) causes crashes until the first hard drive crashes soooo much one has to get a free replacement from HP and then pay shipping for a system recovery disk that no longer comes with hp computers (they have a built in recovery that wipes out all your data which is a pain since I am a paralegal and transferred many gigs of documents before the Vista Vs SystemMech7 Pro started.
Only after I researched and sent Microsoft and HP the consent decree’s Bill Gates lost
anti-trust class action on which promised that Vista would allow non-partner programs to be added at start up, did hp and Microsoft say they had a committee reviewing the problem that they expected to fix with the next version if Vista (not present version), but my posting the anti-trust violationnationally got me another hard drive and Iolo System Mech 7 and
Vista came up with an update patch for the problem.
Bottom line is whether its Dell or HP or Apple, if you google for lawsuits they have lost concerning the supposedly free programs they load into your new computer (which are
actually unwanted advertising designed not to uninstall and to continually pop up trying
to wear you down until you purchase it), then send a copy of the Judge’s order (or consent decree = judge approved settlement), many months later you should get a patch fix, but those who rely on the kindness of retailers like Staples (evil company unless you buy their special 1 year repair service insurance), you gotta know computers are sold at low prices as mass advertising machines for partner products, designed to crash within2-6 months and
fail completely within one year, in most cases, so even though it is extortion I would suggest
you pay the extra ten or twenty dollars for stores repair insurance coverage unless you want to spend a few hundred hours getting Bill Gates crew to fix Vista programming that is designed to give preferential treatment to partners products Vista defender always refuses to recognize at start up and fights to remove and crashes unless you buy Norton or
whatever else hp loads into your new advertisingmachine (OOOps, I mean computer)
Michael DuPont
Founder/Owner Paralegal Associates
153 Liverpool Street (#2)
East Boston, MA. 02128
paralegalassociates@hotmail.com
After following some steps cited in other blogs regarding removing Vongo (on a new HP Laptop), Windows installer would start at bootup, and attempt to reinstall Vongo. Since the files were already removed, the installation failed. Here’s what I did to fix the problem:
I did a “REGEDIT” on my Windows Vista Ultimate 64 o/s machine, and deleted all “VONGO” entries. After that, I did a search and destroy on “starz” (the publisher of Vongo).
There was one entry “LEGACY VONGO” or something like that, that would not delete, but upon restart, the Windows installer no longer runs, and I don’t see any remnants of Vongo on my machine.
JUST PLAINLY FRUSTRATING !
Toshiba provided me with a Satelite laptop in exchange for my money.
They gave me a thirty day Toshiba Free TRIAL of Vongo.
Vongo transformed the trial from 30 days to 14 days .
I canceled the account , however , It seems I can’t truly get rid of Vongo or Toshiba.
Like so many others I am caught in a nasty web and forced to swallow VISTA
and whatever Toshiba decided would come with it
Buyer BEWARE !
Ratings:I will be fair to Vongo : I quit before I
watched the first download and did not take advantage of their service
(whatever it may entail) I am now very content with Netflix
ok…i’ve tried all of your suggestions and nothing has yet to work. can anyone help me?
Number 37 above worked.
I have been Vongo free (no repetative attempts to reinstall)since August 2007.
To quote Peggy, “go to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=290301. Scroll to Download the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility package now. Download and install the utility. Once it is installed, please run it. Scroll down and look for Vongo. Select and remove.”
I still get a prompt to check for updates but since I am not sure whether it wants to check for Vongo, I do not click it. Since Windows and virus upates are automatic, I am not concerned about what I may be missing.
OK I am not a computer whiz but after reading all the post this is what I did and it seems to have worked. I have an Compaq Persario F756NR about a week old that a friend bought. After trying to delete it in the control panel with no success. I turned on the CA firewall that you get from RRunner and stopped all internet access. Left windows fire wall running. Then went to control panel add/remove and sucessfully removed the program. It is running Vista home premium. Restarted computer and no more Vongo. Checked the common files and no sign of it. I may not have looked deep enough but it appears to be gone. It couldn’t communicate with the internet during removal. It seems to have worked and was relatively simple to do. Hope this helps
JG
I just checked for “C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\UpdateService\isuspm.exe” -startup and it is not there so I am assuming it is completely gone.
JG
Thank God I read your comments about Vongo before I downloaded the website. I’ve decided not to use it. If anybody knows of some other website out there that will download movies that we can watch either on the screen or on the television through our xbox 360, please let me know. Thank you for all your help.
I have tried all opts to rid my hp laptop of the dreaded ( Vongo ) , all opts have failed to completely be removed , but I have found a way to stop the program from running and reloading.
1- control panel
2- select Systems and maintenance
3- select Adm tools
4- select Services
5- search list for Vongo
6- Right click select properties
7- disable program from running
This will stop the program from running.
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