Users who installed the most recent wave 3 betas may have noticed an additional plugin included in Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer called ChoiceGuard. In a posting on the Windows Live Wire last week, Hua Ai and Mikko Ollila from the Live Search team explain exactly what this plugin actually is.
"Microsoft ChoiceGuard is a lightweight software component that enables the choices you make, like what you want to set as your default home page and search provider, during the Windows Live Beta installation process," their post explains.
The duo says they created ChoiceGuard because it was their only way to accomplish the task that the installer needed, due to technical requirements in Firefox and third party software blocking registry keys in Internet Explorer. ChoiceGuard is only installed if you select to set your search or homepage default within the wave 3 installer. In both cases, the settings made by ChoiceGuard can be overwritten by the user anytime they choose, or if another program changes it again for them.
Once Firefox is run with ChoiceGuard active, the plugin will set the defaults requested by the installer, then deactivate and set to uninstall, so the user will not see the plugin the next time Firefox is run.
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