'Windows Internet Explorer provided by Yahoo' - Why? And how do I get rid?

[FannyPriceless]

The message at the top of my browser window on my laptop reads 'Windows Internet Explorer provided by Yahoo!'

This implies that IE is somehow being delivered via Yahoo. Why? I did used to have Yahoo as my homepage but have since changed this. The message remains. How do I get just straightforward IE direct from wherever it's supposed to come from?

Would this be slowing my laptop down? Or doing anything else sinister?

When you originally set up your broadband it came with a CD which you put in the drive. During that installation process the software on the CD updated the text at the top of IE to say 'provided by Yahoo!'.

This isn't a problem. What might a problem is the age of the browser that you're using because as a rule you only see that text on older browsers. Can you click on the help menu and click about and tell me what version you're on? If you're on IE6, for example, then you need to get off it as fast as you can.

The version is IE8, according to About.

That's fine. IE8 is the latest version of IE available for Windows XP (assuming you're on Windows XP).

If it's really bugging you and you're feeling really brave you could tinker with the registry to change it. I wouldn't recommend it unless you need to, though.

No, I am not very brave!

Is it likely that this is slowing down my interwebnet? Or spying on my every move and telling the CIA about it?

Nah. Are you having speed problems?

(It's GCHQ that'll be doing the spying, not the CIA)

Speed is mostly OK, but it does chugg slowly a bit from time to time. If the Yahoo thing is not to blame, I suspect it could be AVG, or the HP printer support thing, or BBC iPlayer (the last two always seem to be running, and popping up to tell me things I don't really need to know).

I guess I'll leave the Yahoo thing as it is.

By the way, I do know a bit about GCHQ because I know someone who used to.......

AVG is a proper resource hog. If you've got the free one, and it's AVG 2012, I'd be inclined to uninstall it and replace with Microsoft Security Essentials, which is free A/V from Microsoft. Yes, they have actually given something away. It does (IMO) a better job than AVG, and it doesn't hammer the computer like AVG does.

There's a setting in iPlayer where you can turn it off to stop it loading automatically on startup.