PC Hell: Popular Screensavers Removal Instructions

Popular Screensavers is an program offering over 10,000 screensavers for your computer. It is part of the Fun Web Products suite of utilities such as Smiley Central, Cursor Mania, My Mail Stationery, My Mail Signature, PopSwatter, and the My Way website portal.

If you are wanting to install screensavers, you may visit Popular Screensavers

Although none of the FunWebProduct screensavers claim to be spyware, they do slow your computer down. All of the products use cookies to track usage, although they claim not to use cookies or anything else to track personally identifiable information. That being said, I would still recommend uninstalling the Popular Screensavers software and other Fun Web Products if you feel your computer runs better without them. They are found by many spyware removal tools such as Spybot Search and Destroy, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, although they are deemed spyware safe other programs.

You'll notice the following addition to your Internet Explorer standard button bar if Popular Screensavers is installed.

The option for Popular Screensavers will show in your Screensavers drop down list when you go into your Display properties in Windows.

If you run Hijackthis, you'll also notice the following lines that have been added:

R3 - URLSearchHook: (no name) - {00A6FAF6-072E-44cf-8957-5838F569A31D} - C:\Program Files\MyWebSearch\SrchAstt\1.bin\MWSSRCAS.DLL

O2 - BHO: MyWebSearch Search Assistant BHO - {00A6FAF1-072E-44cf-8957-5838F569A31D} - C:\Program Files\MyWebSearch\SrchAstt\1.bin\MWSSRCAS.DLL

O2 - BHO: mwsBar BHO - {07B18EA1-A523-4961-B6BB-170DE4475CCA} - C:\Program Files\MyWebSearch\bar\1.bin\MWSBAR.DLL

O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [MyWebSearch Email Plugin] C:\PROGRA~1\MYWEBS~1\bar\1.bin\mwsoemon.exe

O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [MyWebSearch Email Plugin] C:\PROGRA~1\MYWEBS~1\bar\1.bin\mwsoemon.exe

O4 - Startup: MyWebSearch Email Plugin.lnk = C:\Program Files\MyWebSearch\bar\1.bin\MWSOEMON.EXE

O4 - Global Startup: MyWebSearch Email Plugin.lnk = C:\Program Files\MyWebSearch\bar\1.bin\MWSOEMON.EXE

O16 - DPF: {1D4DB7D2-6EC9-47A3-BD87-1E41684E07BB} - http://ak.imgfarm.com/images/nocache/funwebproducts/ei/PopularScreenSaversFWBInitialSetup1.0.0.8.cab

3) Find "My Web Search (Popular Screensavers)" in the list of installed programs and click on Change/Remove to uninstall it. You may also want to uninstall any of the following items associated with FunWebProducts.

5) With HijackThis, scan for and fix any of the entries shown above that may be remaining.

6) Next, open My Computer, Drive C, and double-click on the Program Files folder

8) Fun Web Products Popular Screensavers should now be completely uninstalled from your computer.

9) There will be some minor registry entries left behind by the uninstall, however these can be cleaned up by running SpyBot Search and Destroy or Ad-Aware SE or left alone. Sometimes, a few of the registry keys for Fun Web Products are not removed from the HKey_Users section of the registry. In these cases, click on Start, Run, Type Regedit and press Enter. In the registry, click on Edit, then Find, and type Fun Web Products in the blank to search for. Delete any entries you find.