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remove ICQ toolbar

  • 6 replies
  • 442 have this problem
  • 10 views
  • Last reply by profstone1

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I have searched the web for ways to remove the ICQ toolbar, but none of them have been successful. I have tried removing it through the Add-On's menu, the Add/Remove Programs function of my computer and by editing the registry keys, but it is STILL THERE and making my computer quite sluggish. A new tab opened in Firefox is always an ICQ tab. One set of instructions that removed it from the harddrive by removing files was not accessible to me as there does not appear to be a user folder on the C drive...

I have searched the web for ways to remove the ICQ toolbar, but none of them have been successful. I have tried removing it through the Add-On's menu, the Add/Remove Programs function of my computer and by editing the registry keys, but it is STILL THERE and making my computer quite sluggish. A new tab opened in Firefox is always an ICQ tab. One set of instructions that removed it from the harddrive by removing files was not accessible to me as there does not appear to be a user folder on the C drive...

All Replies (6)

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I believe you'd be better off directly asking ICQ for support. They are not known to be a malicious company, so I'm guessing they'll help you with that better than we can. Because all I can tell you is that you can disable any of your installed plugins by going into Tools > Add-ons > Plugins and disable and even uninstall any of your extensions by going into Tools > Add-ons > Plugins. Remember that you need to contact the author of a given add-on for support.

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You'd think ICQ are not a malicious company, but that changed some time ago. They also hijacked the search provider on my IE browser and I can't restore the defaults by either disabling all the add-ons or selecting the prefered search engine in preferences.

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Here is the solution:

To remove ICQ toolbar from FireFox

  1. Go to Tools->Addons and find the ICQ Toolbar and uninstall it.

To change the FireFox search back to normal:

  1. Open a new tab in FireFox
  2. Type about:config in the address bar
  3. Type keyword.URL to find the entry
  4. Right click on it and choose reset or click modify change that entry to http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q= to return to the normal Google search. (keyword.URL should currently show http://search.icq.com/search/afe_results.php?ch_id=afex&tb_ver=2.0.0.4&q=)

You can change the default search URL to anything you want instead of Google. Here’s more info about the FireFox keyword.URL


source:http://www.howtohacks.com/2011/02/how-to-remove-icq-default-search-in-...

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My chosen Search toolbar was AVG after installing FF4 and then AVG2011. FF4 shows ICQ Search and looking at keyword.URL as above, I see AVG search, etc. but ICQ search on main toolbar!

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I have made the changes in internet options and about:config and set the homepage to firefox under options in tools on the browser. FF opens without icq, but as soon as I search for anything the results are returned by icq search when I want google.

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I found this blog to be the most effective way to remove ICQ from my default search address bar.

http://tomfaust.blogspot.com/2008/07/removing-icq-search-from-firefox.html