Moment of Weakness

Yesterday I was downloading a new version of a game I enjoy. I got onto a page where the download was supposed to happen. But (apparently) instead of my download popping up some ugly little repository of internet filth popped up. And since I was expecting my game, I hit 'open' and got a batch of crap on my system. GRRRRRRR

This thing installed tons of crap including an annoying toolbar with a button that said “meet live girls.” Lovely. I was able to clean most of it out with Spybot S&D which is the best program out there, incidentally, for cleaning this kind of crap off of your system. (BTW, another good tool is Spyware Blaster which prevents icky stuff from getting on your computer in the first place).It did, however miss an annoying thing called Lycos Side Search. Undoubtedly because we usually expect companies like Lycos to be above-board, but apparently when you're out of favor, you stoop pretty low. It was super annoying because unlike whatever other default searcher I had there before, it wouldn't let me type in top level domains (i.e. jesser.org) and find them. It required the www. So I looked up how to get rid of this thing and found a few links advising me to uninstall it using the add/remove programs thingy in control panel. Of course, the little bugger wasn't listed there.

So for anyone who's run into this problem, just open your program files, find the lycos folder and then the side search folder and there's an uninstall program that WORKS.