Do you see several browser toolbars hovering at the top of your browser window? These toolbars are designed to let the user access handy features quickly, but only too often these toolbars are completely useless. That’s because originally browser toolbars were created for old versions of Internet Explorer, a browser that didn’t offer much functionality at all. If you are using a modern browser like Chrome or Firefox, toolbars only take up valuable screen space. Worse still, a lot of browser toolbars edit hidden settings to change your homepage, default search engine, and redirect your browser. These toolbars are borderline malware, and the best way to deal with them is to remove them. This is often not as straight-forward as it should be. Here are some tips that will help you delete browser toolbars from your computer.
Disable toolbars from browser settings
The first step towards removing browser toolbars is to disable the add-ons responsible for the toolbar. To do that, you need to go to browser settings, find the entry that deals with add-ons or extensions, open your extensions, find the toolbar entry and disable it. The actual process depends on the browser you use. If possible, try uninstalling the toolbar right from your browser settings. This will not work for all toolbars because some of them install themselves just like any other software.
Uninstall toolbars from the Control Panel
A lot of browser toolbars can only be uninstalled from the Control Panel because they install themselves as programs and not as browser add-ons. To do this, click on the Start button in Windows 7 (or use the Search feature to go to Control Panel on your Windows 8 PC). Then click on Uninstall a Program. Browse the list of programs installed on your computer and find the toolbars you want to remove (Ask toolbar, Babylon toolbar and some other bars can be uninstalled this way). Then uninstall the toolbar just like you uninstall any other software. Don’t forget to reboot your PC when done for the changes to take effect.
Uninstall toolbars in bulk using FileCleaner
If you have lots and lots of toolbars that are proving to be difficult to remove, then you could use a program called FileCleaner to delete them in bulk. The program has a special feature where you can do it really quickly. Just open FileCleaner, go to the Browser Extension category, select the toolbars you want to remove and let FileCleaner do the rest. It does a really good job at not only removing toolbars, but also reverting all the changes they may have made.
As you can see, even the nastiest toolbars are not that difficult to delete.
