How to get rid of Hotbar?

ya_know raises some valid points (and not just regarding this particular topic)

One of the most frustrating aspects of poorly-written applications is that they leave behind a lot of "junk"; both in the system registry and also on your drive (as file system objects).

One of the best ways to get around this problem is to get in the habit of seeing exactly what an installation does to affect the environment of your operating system. A good way to do this is to download and install a program called InstallWatch. This app is available as a free download, and makes a useful addition to your arsenal of utilities. You can get it at:

http://www.epsilonsquared.com/

Upon installation, this program will take a snapshot of your hard drive, and then create a small database that uses a reverse delta history of changes made to your drive, thus eliminating the guesswork involved with trying to get rid of "lamerware" on your machine.

There is another app on this site called InstallRite that supplements InstallWatch by allowing you to build your own installer programs without having to spend a bunch of cash on the fancier packages (like Wise or InstallShield) -or- go barking mad trying to write installation packages using Microsoft's MSI technology. This comes in rather handy when trying to do things that are not normally possible, like installing IE6 or the .NET framework on a Windows 95 machine.

Granted, all of this information is moot after-the-fact, but if you get acclimated with these tools & become disciplined in using them before installing new software, you will eliminate most of the headaches involved with hunting for CLSIDs & GUIDs in the registry. This should make your time spend in front of your computer much less exasperating, and also serve to facilitate the allocation of more free time to dedicate to the consumption of alcohol & the carnal exploitation of consenting females.

Hope this information helps!

-mike

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NEPATEC

http://www.epsilonsquared.com/

Upon installation, this program will take a snapshot of your hard drive, and then create a small database that uses a reverse delta history of changes made to your drive, thus eliminating the guesswork involved with trying to get rid of "lamerware" on your machine.

Hope this information helps!

-mike

---

Looks really good NEPATEC.
Definitely going to check this out, especially InstallRite for serveral of my software developer customers.
Thankshttps://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2006/04/1.gif

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by riddellcomp

So even though I browse via the local computer and use Outlook on the server it has still managed to install to Outlook on the server? I would have thought it would only be installed onto the local machine and therefore only affect Outlook on the local machine. Which it hasn't.

---

HotBar could have been installed on the Terminal server by any user that logs in, then all users become effected. I saw this a few times with Bonzi Buddy on some NT4 TS's. Nothing you did, and probably nothing you can uninstall, if outlook is a published application running from the TS, and you have no desktop session available to you to work on the server...Contact your IT, if they don't use the server regularly, they may not be aware that someone has done this, but they can remove it.

I phoned IT today and they confirmed that someone at head office had installed hotbar which effected everybodys Outlook session. They have since removed it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by riddellcomp

I phoned IT today and they confirmed that someone at head office had installed hotbar which effected everybodys Outlook session. They have since removed it.

---

Heehee...funny thing is, you told us that you had a remote connection for your outlook to a TS in the first post. I actually completely overlooked your mention of that until later in the thread, Sorry. I will pay closer attention next time, I promise!!! :thumbs:

Hotbar has many pieces and many behaviors programmed into it.

I've found it in our company last year, found out where all the pieces were, wrote an INF file to kill it and clean it from the registry, and then delete the rest of it on the next reboot.

Then I found out about Ad-Aware and Spybot. Spybot is now my favorite (by far!) but both are good.

Hotbar installs into Outlook and is seperte than what installs into IE.
Also, there's a Hotbar spy engine that won't uninstall. It's not accidental, either. If you have an Add/Remove item, it's a placebo that will remove most of the visual stuff. The spy engine is designed not to ever be removed. That's another attribute of "spyware".

Another characteristic I've witnessed is that Hotbar would detect when you're sending an email to multiple recipients (more than two, but not sure where the trigger was) and attach a Hotbar installer link into emails. This is the exact same behavior as viruses. The link said "Click here for info". Clicking would install without any info!

It's a nasty bugger. You should NEVER trust spyware to remove by using Add/Remove. MS Windows doesn't create the uninstaller. The installed application creates it (or fails to create it) and is written by the same coders that wrote the app. Always use Ad-Aware or Spybot to clean an "infected" machine and keep it clean.