Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

New Dell computers currently come with a browser "feature" that points you to a custom search page with a ton of paid results when you mistype a URL in the address bar. Danny Sullivan does a brilliant job of explaining how the Dell browser error pages work at Search Engine Land. Almost half the screen on my display set at 1280x1024 is filled with a paid listing, rather than the meaningful result I might expect.

My Dell Latitude D620 suffered from this problem when I got it. For instance, I typed 'google' in the address bar leaving off the .com. Here' s what the page looks like:

Now the easy way to avoid this is to install Firefox and kiss IE7 goodbye. I happen to like IE7 for some things, so instead of limiting my options, I figured out how to turn off Dell's lousy user experience.
With IE7 open, click Tools > Internet Options:

Click on the Programs tab:

Click the Manage add-ons button and locate the browswer add-on in the list called CBrowswerHelperObject Object from a publisher named (Not verified) Dell Inc. Click the radio button to Disable this plugin and click OK.

Close IE7 and relaunch it. Type in the same 'google' sans quotes in the address bar and you get the same results every other IE7 user expects to see when Google is their default search engine.