I’m always looking for free and low-cost tools that will help my productivity. The other night I looked for software that would keep me from blog surfing, news reading and other “screensucking” activities.

I discovered Zihtec’s Internet Control for Business, a handy little computer babysitter that promised to help you “regain the productivity currently lost due to employees frivolous and inappropriate online chatting or non-business related surfing and shopping.”

I downloaded the free trial.

I’m still reeling from the computer carnage that ensued.

During the initial install, I didn’t get a setup wizard which would have let me establish an admin password. As soon as I installed it, I saw it was a little rinky-dink program with bugs and a not-too-professional appearance. I tried to uninstall. It said, please disable the program first. I tried to disable. It said, please enter the admin password. THERE IS NO ADMIN PASSWORD.

This clever little program was designed to be completely unremovable by naughty employees who don’t want corporate big brother software on their personal machines. I downloaded uninstallers, consulted technology experts on my favorite listserv, tried to revert using Windows System Restore, left three messages with Zihtec’s help desk (no response)…. I actually was able to remove most of it, but a little remnant is still here. And the kicker — the remnant blocks some of my other programs and prevents me from being able to use Windows Task Manager to stop cranky programs. It even broke my Jing!

Thus, yesterday I spent the entire day rebooting, downloading utilities, consulting with experts, cursing and finally coming to the conclusion (with the experts) that I’d have to format my computer, wipe everything off, and rebuild it.

Now, getting back to the purpose of downloading the software to begin with: I did it to INCREASE productivity, and I wasted all day!

Yeah, I had a cookie with dinner. And I think I deserved a cupcake as well.

The good news is that I did find a very nice program to do the same job. I downloaded a trial of Internet Access Controller, and it allows me to restrict certain URLs during the day (like Twitter, for instance) so that I don’t have the option of getting caught up in social networking instead of work. I’m going to buy this one for $14.95.

More good news: Thanks to the tech experts, I found a bunch of utilities that would allow you to find and destroy a NORMAL icky program. This Zihtec thing, though…. it’s like The Terminator.

PS — Today’s little extra for my email subscription folks is going to be a list of the utilities. Subscribe to Avenue Z by email if you want the inside scoops!

PS again — if the Zihtec folks read this, I’ll be very, very happy to print an updated blog post about how you came to my rescue and solved this problem!