3Removing Firefox plugins, addons & extensions

Nearly 18 months ago I wrote a brief note about how to [int­link id=“54” type=“post”]remove cer­tain fire­fox plu­gins, addons and extensions[/intlink] which don’t have a “remove” but­ton in the Add-ons man­ager. I have updated and added to the ori­gin­al list, and will con­tin­ue to add any fur­ther plu­gins I encounter here. If in doubt there is usu­ally no harm done by leav­ing or remov­ing any plu­gins, addons or exten­sions. I advise remov­ing all of those that you don’t use as they are using memory and pro­cessing resources and slow fire­fox down. In some cases the sta­bil­ity of the browser can even be under­mined by plugins.

Note for 64bit Win­dows (with 32bit Firefox)
Instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node
Also, instead of Pro­gram Files\Mozilla Fire­fox look in Pro­gram Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox
Finally, instead of C:\Windows\System32 look in C:\Windows\SysWOW64

1. Noki­a’s PC Sync 2 Synchronisation

• Click on start, and type regedit
• Nav­ig­ate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions]
• Delete the key bkmrksync@nokia.com

2. Sun­’s Java Con­sole which is fre­quently lis­ted sev­er­al times with vari­ous versions

• Loc­ate the fire­fox install­a­tion folder (usu­ally C:\Program Files\Mozilla Fire­fox\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\)
• Open the exten­sions subfolder
• Delete the folders named {CAFEEFAC-0016–0000-00**-ABCDEFFEDCBA} where the ** can be any num­ber (it appears to rep­res­ent the ver­sion number)

3. Sun­’s Java Deploy­ment Toolkit 6

• Delete C:\Windows\System32\npdeployJava1.dll

4. Adobe Acrobat — Cre­ate PDF

• Click on start, and type regedit
• Nav­ig­ate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions]
• Delete the string web2pdfextension@web2pdf.adobedotcom

5. Adobe Con­trib­ute Toolbar

• Click on start, and type regedit
• Nav­ig­ate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions]
• Delete the string {01A8CA0A-4C96-465b-A49B-65C46­FAD54F9}

6. Adobe Acrobat

• Browse to Pro­gram Files (usu­ally C:\Program Files (x86)\ or C:\Program Files\)
• Open The Adobe folder
• Open the Acrobat ##.# folder (where ##.# is a version)
• Open the Acrobat folder
• Delete the Browser folder

7. Adobe Flash Play­er 9 r45

• Delete c:\windows\system32\NPSWF32.dll
• Delete c:\windows\system32\NPSWF32_FlashUtil.exe

8. Win­amp Applic­a­tion Detector

• Loc­ate the fire­fox install­a­tion folder (usu­ally C:\Program Files\Mozilla Fire­fox\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\)
• Open the exten­sions subfolder
• Delete the file npwachk.dll

9. HP Smart Web Printing

• Delete the folder ‘MozillaAddOn3’ from C:\Program Files\HP\Digital Imaging\smart web printing

10. Skype Click to Call

• First remove “skype click to call” from “pro­grams and fea­tures” in the con­trol pan­el. (Note: in Win­dows XP or older, ‘pro­grams and fea­tures’ was called ‘add/remove programs’)
• Then delete the folder {82AF8DCA-6DE9-405D-BD5E-43525BDAD38A} from C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browser\extensions\

11. Ado­beEx­Man­Detect (added Dec 14)

• Delete C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Exten­sion Man­ager CS6\Win64Plugin\npAdobeExManDetectX64.dll or C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Exten­sion Man­ager CS6\Win32Plugin\npAdobeExManDetectX86.dll

12. Ado­beAAM­De­tect (added Dec 14)

• Delete C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\OOBE\PDApp\CCM\Utilities\npAdobeAAMDetect64.dll or C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\OOBE\PDApp\CCM\Utilities\npAdobeAAMDetect.dll

13. Java Deploy Toolkit

• Delete C:\Windows\system32\npdeployJava1.dll

An addi­tion­al tip.  To loc­ate the rel­ev­ant files for each plu­gin do the following

• Open the fire­fox help menu
• Select troubleshoot­ing information
• In the top box (Applic­a­tion Basics) click on the “Show Folder” but­ton. (Note: in older ver­sions of Fire­fox this was called “Open Con­tain­ing Folder”)
• Open the file pluginreg.dat in a text editor
• This file con­tains inform­a­tion about all the plu­gins, includ­ing their location.

Thanks to techyforums.com for solu­tion #1.