Adware Removed!

There is so much free software available on the Internet. The thing to remember is to not do the standard install for anything.  Many times there is adware piggy packing in the installation.  It is how some free software pays for itself.  If you choose a custom installation you can usually find the option that says "install X software too".  Just de-select it and keep the software you want.

I think this is how I must have gotten the search.conduit.com toolbar, plug-ins or whatever else they added to my computer.  In Firefox and in Internet Explorer, every time I opened a new tab, it would bring up their search page.  I tried finding a solution to uninstall it manually.  I don't generally trust ad-ware removal programs.  There are some that are ad-ware disguised as removal tools.

After not succeeding in find a manual solution I used Adware-Removal-Tool-v3.5.exe from http://www.techsupportall.com/how-to-remove-conduit-search/.  It seems to have worked great.

After I used this tool, I uninstalled the conduit search keeper program. Rebooted, then changed the home page for Internet Explorer.  I then re-ran Adware-Removal-Tool-v3.5.exe and rebooted. When I opened IE, I tried to look at the search engine ad-ins.  It notified me that the registry for search providers was corrupted and that IE was going to reset them back to the default settings.