As of Grokster v1.5 the aforementioned spyware has become "mandatory". Thus, even if you uncheck Gator and all the other crap that Grokster would foist on your poor, unsuspecting hard drive you will end up with Cydoor installed on your system. Worse yet, if you remove the offending spyware using AdAware or similar Grokster will refuse to run.

While the particular flavor of Cydoor installed does not include cd_load.exe, it does use cd_clint.dll and this is why I used quotes around the word mandatory in the previous paragraph. Just as blocking Grokster's ads has always been as easy as running Junkbuster, blocking Cydoor is entirely possible (although perhaps more obscure).

With the help of the Cydoor SDK (which is apparantly available on their public FTP site) someone at cexx.org created a tiny program that when compiled will mimic the cd_clint.dll well enough to make Grokster think that the spyware is installed and running. Since the source was made available, someone named Mike Dombrowski updated it to work with the latest Cydoor API.

What this all means to the average end user is that you install Grokster, replace the cd_clint.dll in c:\windows\system with the dummy file and all is well.

Until Cydoor updates their software again and your dummy DLL breaks...

But don't think about that right now! Live in the moment and hit http://www.cexx.org/cd_clint.zip for the compiled DLL (or use the cd_clint.dll hard link I created above if you prefer to compile it yourself).


Update: Those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about may proceed to http://www.project-insomnia.com/grokster.html where the clue phone is ringing and it's for you!


Update #2: The Grokster 1.5.1 upgrade will replace your fake cd_clint.dll file with a real one, so you'll need to fix that.