You can uninstall Firefox without loosing your history.

During the uninstal proces you will be ask if you want to remove your personal data. Just don't select that option.

• Uninstall Firefox from your computer

hello, please try to reset firefox and see if this can address the issue (this will keep your bookmarks, history and passwords)...

See also:

• History Export: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/history-export/

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Uninstalling_add-ons
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Uninstalling_toolbars

You can rename or delete the prefs.js file and possible numbered prefs-##.js files and a possible user.js file to reset all prefs to the default value.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Resetting_preferences

I need to know if uninstalling and reinstalling firefox will remove the search conduit malware

Not very likely that uninstalling Firefox will remove an extension.
This extension is likely installed in the Firefox profile folder and needs to be uninstalled and possible prefs that have been changed by the extension need to be reset on the about:config page.
See my above reply for links on you to remove extensions and reset prefs.

I think I'm entitled to a better answer than to tell me what is "likely" and what is not. There are a thousand "likely" things to choose from. I think you should research the search conduit malware problem so that you can give people better answers than that. Concise and easily doable solutions. You should come up with a software, or find one and feature it, that will purge this. I've been trying to fix this for three days. There are thousands of people being affected by this who have no better than average computer skills, and it is a vulnerability on the part of Mozilla that is allowing this to proliferate. One of the parties responsible for this plague is divx.com. they have this malware contained in downloads that they distribute, and have played dumb about it. I appreciate your help, but it's really of no use if you don't actually and specifically address the problem. So instead of spending time puzzling over my question for all of 2 minutes, put your time into actually solving it and making it available to the rest of the victims

thanks

could you go to firefox > help > troubleshooting information, copy the contents of that page and paste them here into a reply on the forum? this might give us a clue what is going on...

edit: please also note that conduit isn't getting into your computer because of a vulnerability in firefox but because it is getting installed by the user - this might either be intentional or a user might be getting tricked into it (it comes bundled with other software, is installed under a false pretext, etc.).

Remove a toolbar that has taken over your Firefox search or home page

resetting firefox fixed it