I downloaded Sky's Broadband on Sky software, after which my usually fast PC went into snail-paced mode. I removed the software but the computer was still very, very slow. So I went to a restore point before the software download and now all is well. What's going on? Patrick S Briggs
Sky by Broadband lets subscribers download Sky movies free. What may be less obvious is that you are not downloading them from Sky but mainly from other users. The Sky software installs a copy of Kontiki's peer-to-peer file-sharing software, and this runs whenever you start your PC, whether you use Sky's service or not. It is consuming your bandwidth, but you agreed to allow your PC be used to upload files to other users, and this is stated in the terms and conditions.
The same Kontiki program is used by the BBC's iMP project and the Open Media Network. You should be able to uninstall it using the Add/Remove Programs applet, as claimed in Kontiki's help file. After that, run the KClean.exe program, which is available from the BBC, Download.com and other sites.
Update: Several versions of KClean.exe have sudenly, and strangely, disappeared. The BBC site no longer works, a chunk of Open Media's page has simply vanished, and Kontiki's site no longer offers it.
