I can't uninstall the Ask Toolbar updater despite having admin access?

Question

I'm going through my installed programs clearing out stuff I don't use and came across an "Ask Toolbar Updater". Now I don't recalling ever installing the Ask Toolbar so I want to get rid of this. However clicking "uninstall" gives:

You do not have sufficient access to uninstall Ask Toolbar Updater. Please contact your system administrator.

Despite me being an admin account.

How do I force the uninstall?

NOTE: I don't have the Ask toolbar installed on any browser (IE, Firefox or Chrome) so if I (or one my kids) did ever install it by mistake the toolbar itself has been removed.

I did a search and found this closed thread on the PC Help forums which describes my problem exactly.

Two solutions are presented:

1. Use the Revo Uninstaller - http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html
2. Use something called Adware Cleaner - http://general-changelog-team.fr/fr/downloads/finish/20-outils-de-xplode/2-adwcleaner (WARNING - this is the actual download link).

Are these any good?

NOTE 2: This problem probably isn't unique to the Ask Toolbar.

Answer 1

I looked in the registry for "ask toolbar" and found the uninstaller entry at:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall{79A765E1-C399-405B-85AF-466F52E918B0}

This has a "DisplayIcon" entry that points to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Ask.com\favicon.ico

However, "C:\Program Files (x86)\Ask.com\" doesn't exist.

I think that the uninstaller entry was left over from when I actually uninstalled the toolbar but that the uninstaller left this behind. Therefore just deleting this registry entry is all that I need to do.

This would imply that the error message is misleading. The uninstall process is trying to run the uninstall command which is returning a "file not found" error, but the the program is interpreting that as "you don't have permission to run the file" - hence the particular error message.

This solution would be a general one for all cases where there is an entry in the programs list but where there's no trace of the program on the computer's hard drive any more.

Answer 2

According to this forum, it seems a known working solution for removing that malware is ADwcleaner.

Others have said Revocleaner works, but the most enthusiastic praise seems to come from ADwcleaner users.

Personally, I would never install an application to remove another (apart, perhaps, from the Norton Removal Tool in the case of Norton).

You might want to check that the NTFS permissions on all Ask Toolbar Updater directories and contents look correct, before relying on 3rd party tools to do it for you.

In the past, when I've come across instances where the odd small utility won't uninstall, I will RE-install it, then attempt to uninstall it again properly.

Failing that, I would simply delete its installation directory, then search the registry using a string which identifies every trace of it and unpick it from the registry manually (generally only for small applications).

Answer 3

If you remove the ASK Toolbar entry first from the program list then the updater program just gets confused. The message actually means that it can't find the related files in order to remove it.

The quickest way I got around the problem is that I use CCleaner as my clean-up program and it has an option to 'delete' an entry from the Uninstall Program list. (TOOLS>UNINSTALL) It doesn't actually uninstall the program it just removes it from the list.

The best way to avoid this would be to uninstall the ASK Toolbar Updater before the ASK Toolbar program.