Preventing the RealOne Player From Taking Over Your Computer
by Jason Crowder
1/3/03

Note: This article pertains to the older RealOne Player (RealPlayer version 9). An updated article Preventing the RealPlayer 10 From Taking Over Your Computer, has now been posted.

Since its inception, RealNetworks has been the dominant player in the streaming video market. Recent competition from Microsoft and Apple has caused RealNetworks to start resorting to not-very-user-friendly business practices, however. This has become quite apparent in their latest incarnation of the Real Player.

Although the RealOne player promises to be the end-all media playback solution, you must put up with excessive advertisements and promotions for their premium “pay for” service as well as overly aggressive tactics to keep you from using other installed media players. This article will give you some tips to help keep these annoyances at bay and keep the RealOne player from “taking over your computer.”

Installation

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From the get go, the RealOne player promises to take over your computer if you are not careful. Let’s take download process, for example. On the download web page, RealNetworks instructs you to click the “Yes” button on the security dialog to accept the “RealOne Player Installer”, but my advice to you is to click the “No” button. This RealOne Player Installer is actually “RealDownload”, a download manager, in disguise. Personally, I don’t like download managers because they often display advertisements, save your downloaded files in weird places, and are a pain to uninstall. Clicking the “No” button will cause the security dialog to disappear. At this point, you should click the “Restart Download ” link on the web page. This second time around, the actual installation file (an “.exe” file) can be saved to your computer’s hard drive. After the file has been saved to your hard drive, run the setup routine by double-clicking on the file.

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Don’t lower your guard just yet, there are several other “gotchas” than can be avoided during this setup. Be sure to choose the “Custom Install” instead of the “Express Install” option. The Express Install option will place icons and advertisements in various places and disable your other media players by automatically associating the RealOne player with most media formats. Follow the dialog instructions and navigate to the “Program Location and Desktop Settings” dialog screen.

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On this screen, I like to uncheck all of the “Desktop Settings” checkboxes. Don’t worry, a shortcut to the RealOne player will still be installed on your Start Menu under Programs-- the only place it should be placed, in my opinion.

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Another screen to pay careful attention to is the “Default Media Player” dialog. Because I don’t care to have the RealOne player be anything other than a RealMedia player, I like to uncheck all of the checkboxes on this screen. If you’re considering leaving any of these checked, I recommend you click on the “Customize” button instead. This will give you very minute control over the file types that are associated with RealOne and won’t catch you off guard at a later time.

Before you leave this dialog, you should make sure the “Periodically check my system…” option is unchecked. Checking this option will make the RealOne constantly monitor your file associations to make sure no other programs associate with files already associated with RealOne. On the surface, this doesn’t sound too bad, but it causes the RealOne player to constantly run in the background (even when you think it’s closed) taking up system resources.

A Warm Welcome… or Not

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After the installation routine has completed, you will be “welcomed” to the RealOne player with another series of dialogs. Actually, these next few dialogs are pretty much a ploy to get you to turn over personal information and to sign up for their premium service. You can safely exit out of these dialogs by clicking the “Cancel” button. You’ll be warned that you should continue the “installation” because it has not been completed, but in truth, the installation process has already finished and you don’t need to turn over personal information to make your RealOne player operate properly.

Fine Tuning Your Preferences

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Your RealOne player is now almost annoyance free. Once inside the RealOne player, go to the “Automatic Services” section of the Preferences dialog (on the Tools menu, select “Preferences…”). On this dialog, I usually uncheck all of these checkboxes. If any of these is checked, you’ll probably get pop-up messages telling you of a “great new offer from RealNetworks” or other such advertisements/promotions when you least expect it (even when your RealOne player is not running).

Extreme Measures

For the most part, the tips above will keep the RealOne player taking over your computer. Occasionally, however, even after following all of measures above, the RealOne player insists on displaying pop-up advertisements and promotions while the player is running. After some research, I’ve discovered that these pop-up messages seem to be tied to the file “realsched.exe” which is installed with RealOne. Furthermore, I’ve discovered that this file is not needed in order for the RealOne player to function “properly.” Of course, RealNetworks would have you to believe that all of the pop-ups, promotions, automatic updates, etc. are necessary functionality.

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If you can live without the RealPlayer doing automatic things like looking for updates, new promotions, and advertisements, you can safely rename the “realsched.exe” file to something else to prevent it from being executed by the RealOne player. In order to rename this file, you first must make sure that it’s not currently running. In the Windows Task Manager, search for realsched.exe and close it if it’s running. Now go to the “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Real\Update_OB” folder on your hard drive and rename the file to something like “realsched.bak.” You probably shouldn’t delete this file because you may need it at a later date for some reason. Please note: renaming this file will prevent the RealOne player from running automatic services. If you determine that your RealOne player is not functioning as you expect after renaming this file, you should rename the file back to its original filename.

Closing Remarks

It's a shame that RealNetworks has resorted to advertising tactics that are so obnoxious. In the end, I believe that it will not help their business plan. In fact, it will probably turn many users to an alternative media player, such as Microsoft or Quicktime.