Removing Toolbars and Weather Programs

To start off, we’re going to remove a few of the most common extras: toolbars, weather applications, and Google Earth. These may seem like small programs, but most of them run constantly in the background, taking up memory that should instead be used for Outlook or Symantec (for spyware and virus detection).

Although these toolbars may seem like useful tools, they are more trouble than they’re worth. Each toolbar you have has to start up every time you open Internet Explorer, causing an extra delay. In addition, Internet Explorer has its own pop-up blocker, but some of these toolbars also have a separate pop-up blocker. These can interfere with your access to certain websites (e.g. employee ESSIC website, or Outlook Web Access). As for the search feature in the toolbars, it is now redundant. Internet Explorer 7 has its own Search box in the top right corner of the window. You are able to choose your own search provider, and it works exactly like the toolbar.

As for the weather applications, they are notorious for causing random problems in Windows. Yes, it’s convenient to always see the temperature, but you can just as easily make a link or shortcut to the website. It takes an extra click to open the website, but the benefits far outweigh that extra mouse click.

Some examples of applications you should remove:
· Desktop Weather
· Accuweather Desktop Alerts
· Yahoo toolbar
· Google toolbar
· AIM or AOL toolbar (just the toolbar, not the IM program itself)
· Accuweather toolbar
· Google Earth (we’ve had many problems with this program lately)

Most of these can easily be removed by going into Control Panel – Add/Remove Programs. You can also sometimes remove them from Start – All Programs – (the specific program folder). In that folder there may be an Uninstall option.

After you’re done removing these programs, you should restart the computer. This will clear out the Temporary files used in the uninstall, and will give your computer a fresh start.