Can’t remove Ask Toolbar Firefox
MicroGuy | September 30, 2009
Over the past several weeks, my Firefox browser (which I love) has been flaking. At what appeared to be random intervals, I would receive the following error while surfing that giant cesspool known as the Internet:
“jar:file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox/chrome/en-US.jar!/locale/browser-region/region.properties“.
A mystery. WTF is causing this to happen!!!!
After 30 minutes of searching the Internet to find a solution AND talking on the phone about an unrelated subject (multitasking micro style), I found the culprit. And that brings us to why you are here, right? This is a bit of karma biting us in the ass really. Remember how you installed Vuze so you could download torrents of DVDs, music, porn, and other exciting and rewarding multimedia nuggets? Well Vuze installs the ASK toolbar as an added “bonus” during the install. To top things off, the name is disguised as “Vuze Ask” in various places on your system. Hey hey great!! Not.
The Ask toolbar suck rocks beyond the scope of human imagination. I’m not going to get into how horribly horrid the Ask toolbar is as WordPress would probably not allow a post with that many characters. Anyway, after reading several posts on manually uninstalling this beast, I finally found the EASY way.
The Solution:
First, open your control panel > Add Remove Programs and uninstall all Vuze/Ask toolbars. They are unnecessary. Restart Firefox. Now, in Firefox click Tools > Add-ons > Plugins. Check to see if any “Vuze or Vuze Ask toolbars” exist, if so remove/disable them. You should be back to happy town now. Enjoy the cesspool.
[...] Link to original post [...]
Remove Ask Tool Bar Revisited | Microguy Internet Consultant | October 8, 2009[...] Link to original post [...]
Thanks a million! I have been haunted by this for days
Mars Mountain | October 17, 2009Thanks a million!
I have been haunted by this for days now. All searches were pointing in the Ask toolbar direction but in my case it was the Vuze toolbar that was the culprit. Uninstalled it and voila!
Glad my posted helped. In case you missed it, check
MicroGuy | October 17, 2009Glad my posted helped. In case you missed it, check out my follow-up concerning more Ask junk in the trunk.
http://www.microguy.net/2009/10/08/removeask-tool-bar-revisited/
You saved me!!! Thanks!!!!
Nicolas Aumond | October 24, 2009You saved me!!!
Thanks!!!!
I had tried removing the stupid Ask toolbar by using
Gerry Hare | November 6, 2009I had tried removing the stupid Ask toolbar by using the Remove Programs route. It did remove the program but still left the Ask page on both IE and Firefox.
I went to the “options” in “Tools” in both browsers and found that the “ask” browser had been selected automatically as the home page.
I deleted this in both browsers and set the default – voila!! Close the browser and reopen and ASK has gone and the normal pages are restored
I know not where but so far it has not reappeared.
PS I could not find the Vuze toobar
Can't anybody answer this question? Oh, go to uninstall
mo | April 14, 2010Can’t anybody answer this question? Oh, go to uninstall programs and FF addons? I never would have thought of that.
Hey, this is 2010 and ask doesn’t die so easily.