a persistent weed

Doing maintenance and upgrades on a family member's PC (Windows Vista). Dutifully use Control Panel | Add/Remove Program to get rid of AVG. Uninstall appeared to be successful.

I tried to use Firefox a little while later to download another favorite tool, used the search feature in the address bar, and was taken to a search results page that was search.avg.com instead of Google.

What?!?!

Double-checked Add/Remove. No AVG remaining.

Searched the web. Found several other people who were having the same problem.

Found several remaining files from AVG.

• AVG8 (Folder C:\Program Files\AVG)
  
• AVG Security Toolbar (Folder C:\Users\#####\AppData\LocalLow)
  
• AVGTOOLBAR (Folder C:\Users\#####\AppData\LocalLow)
  
• AVG7 (Folder C:\Program Files\Grisoft)
  
• AVG (Folder C:\Program Files\)
  
• avg_igeared.sml (File C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins)
  
• AVG8Uninstall.ico (File C:\Users\#####\AppData\Roaming\Software Informer\cache\icons)
  
• avglinks.bmp (File C:\Users\#####\AppData\LocalLow\AVGTOOLBAR)
  
• avglogo.bmp (File C:\Users\#####\AppData\LocalLow\AVGTOOLBAR)
  
• avgtoolbartb0503.cfg (File C:\Users\#####\AppData\LocalLow\AVGTOOLBAR)
  
• avhchk75.exe (Application C:\Program Files\Grisoft\AVG7)
  
• glossary_avgcost.html (HTML Document)
  

Deleted them. Reset the keyword.url value from the search.avg.com hijack to http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=

Think we're back in business....



Keywords
AVG reset my firefox search settings
Firfeox search hijacked by AVG
Firefox search redirected to search.avg.com
AVG is a pain to remove