A few days ago I installed an optional hardware update from ATI via the Windows 7 update utility and then upon every restart of my machine an annoying popup was displayed asking me to register my ATI product.
OK, ok, I’ll register my product although I am surely not interested in receiving more annoying SPAM in my multitude of inboxes. Of course, the act of registering your product does not allow for the option of opting out of any or all emails from ATI.
What made matters worse was that even after registering and checking the do not display this message again option on the popup, time after time, the popup kept coming up every time I restarted.
Failing to find a solution to this problem on the google I ventured into the various startup options available under Windows 7 and found nothing. Finally I resorted to looking at the configuration options under msconfig.
Sure enough, under the Startup tab there is an item called ‘ATI Customer Care’. Apparently this startup task’s only job is to constantly annoy me about registering my product. Disabling this task finally removed the annoying popup from my computer.
Hopefully one day, ATI’s software will be as good as their hardware. I’ve been waiting for over a decade.