How to uninstall 'spyware'

Centauri

Golden Member
Dec 10, 2002
1,631
56
91
Based on good reviews, I downloaded PeaZip in my quest for a free unzipper. Turns out I should have read more up to date reviews because the newer versions now litter your PC with a bunch of crap from some company called 'Conduit', including some truly ungainly toolbars for all of your browsers.

I uninstalled the PeaZip app as well as all of the crap the showed up in the software registry but the ghost of this all still seems to be sneaking in search engine options in my browsers... etc.

How would I go about hunting down whatever's still left on my system?
 

Evander

Golden Member
Jun 18, 2001
1,159
0
76
Those programs should do it (if not, you could do a system rollback: control panel > system and security > Backup and Restore > "recover system settings on your computer" and choose the date before you did the peazip install)

I wouldn't expect PeaZip to have spyware b/c it's listed on sourceforge and is open source. Then I guessed maybe it had something you had to uncheck during install to prevent junk from installing and it looks like I'm right:

"This package contains automatic installer/uninstaller showing optional third party sponsored offers (learn more about the partnership).
If you prefer, PeaZip is also available with no third party bundle: PeaZip (plain) for Windowsrar extractor"

Personally, I've been using 7-zip for a long time and am happy with it: http://www.7-zip.org/