Firefox 3.0.12-> 3.5.2 (?) & Avg tool bar.

Mary_Hartnell

Hi fellow MSE'rs;
I am definitely a supporter of the "If it ain't broke don't fix it" brigade, mainly because I am busy doing other things and partly because I don't really know what I'm doing.

A few weeks ago (free) AVG pestered me into installing a web site analyser to check the "safety" of web sites found by a search browser. (For several years I have used Mac Afee "Site Advisor", which appears to do something very similar.)
So far so good BUT I've also ended up with a new tool bar so that every time I open a new "Tab", I get an initial AVG screen suggesting I should make a Yahoo search.
I can temporarily turn off the useless tool bar, but I am wary of trying to get my initial screen to bring up Google Search, like it used to do in the old days. I standardised on Google as my preferred search engine about 8 years ago and I have no need to go back to the failing faded top search engine of Yahoo. (I assume Avg and Yahoo have done a deal?!?).

Now Firefox is encouraging me to ditch 3.0.12 and install the new all singing and dancing super dooper Firefox. (And i seems to say step one is to get rid of the (hidden) AVG tool bar).

[Last time I succumbed to the blandishments of Firefox and upgraded to a new release, everything worked as usual, but for the plug in ENGLISH spell checker - I had to wait a week or three for that to catch up. I see it is still a bit confused about "succumb" :rotfl:.]

I would welcome any advice on the need to change what I'm currently using, more or less trouble free,
versus
the wonderful new improvements, cleaning up AVG/Firefox, would bring me.

Thanks,

Mary.

m5rcc

FF 3.5.2 is a good improvement on what I think is the best internet browser. I doubt this will solve you AVG issue though....

-TangleFoot-

If memory serves, the easiest way to get rid of the AVG toolbar is to run the installer again and select only the components you wish to include.

This guide should give you some idea as to what you need to do, though the final few steps - such as disabling the resident shield - are only necessary if you really need to eke every last ounce of performance out of your machine and are comfortable without an active virus scanner around.

And don't worry about Firefox; the latest version works just fine with the British English dictionary.

John_Gray

I seem to remember that on one of the PCs at work where the AVG Toolbar had been mistakenly installed, I just did the usual thing of right-clicking in the blank (grey) area to the right of the File - Edit - View - History... line, and clicked on "AVG Toolbar" to remove the tick from it. That simply renders it inactive, and doesn't install it, but that may be adequate for your purposes...

Mary_Hartnell

Thanks John, that is what I'm doing at the moment with the AVG tool bar, but the code is still there as it manages to turn its self back on again from time to time.
I have this nasty feeling that there might be an incompatibility between Firefox 3.5 and AVG as Firefox seems to be muscling in on AVG territory. [Just as the "taqb" concept in Firefox allowed AVG to muscle in on the initial screen technology that was pointing at Google.
When we have a wet afternoon, I'll have a go at playing with it all.

[I also set up a google initial screen that should have welcomed me with the likes of the local weather forecast - It never has worked and crashes, everyday when I stat up.
That is something else to remove!]

Mary

andy2004

well if you turn off firefox updates, for the main program that should stop the upgrade to 3.5.2, the toolbar can be removed, have a look on the addon window and see if theres a uninstall box for it, alternatively you could uninstall avg, reboot the computer and reinstall avg this time without the toolbar, i would use a uninstall tool like recuva freeware, to remove any registry entries the uninstaller for the main program would miss,
run recuva, select AVG, uninstall option 2, scans registry and orphan files, it will then run the avg uninstaller, afterwhich it will look for leftovers, reboot, reinstall without toolbar.
3rd option, Hijackthis and look for the avgtoolbar thats causing the problem and put a tick in and then fix button to remove, reboot,

antispam246

Not sure if it's been mentioned but you can run different versions of firefox alongside one another using profiles. I still run a 2.x version of FF on 3 profiles because of the same attittude "If it ain't broke..." Then I also have 3.5.2 which i'm typing on now. The 2.x being for cashback uses.

If you search on google you can find some good guides on it, or I can probably pull them up from my bookmarks.

Edit: Here's some links from my bookmarks

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/internet/firefox/use-multiple-firefox-profiles-at-the-same-time/
http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox/geek-to-live--manage-multiple-firefox-profiles-231646.php
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=613873

Edit: Woops, just to clarify, the usefulness of this is of course you can tinker with new builds, testing compatibility to all ends whilst maintaining your original and fully working profile (FF setup).

slapshot_2

Don't know if you got your problem sorted or not but if you look to left of the Yahoo toolbar you will see a pencil,just click on the little arrow next to it and you will; see a drop down list in the list it says uninstall just click and you are done, hows that for a quick solution !