PC Hell: Smiley Central Removal Instructions

Smiley Central is an Internet Explorer plugin that allows you to add numerous smiley faces to your email or instant messages. It is part of the Fun Web Products suite of utilities such as Cursor Mania, My Mail Stationary, My Mail Signature, PopSwatter, Popular Screensavers, Webfetti, and the My Way website portal.

Although none of these products 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 SmileyCentral 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 by other programs.

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

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

O8 - Extra context menu item: &Search - http://bar.mywebsearch.com/menusearch.html?p=ZSYYYYYYYYUS

3) Find "My Web Search (Smiley Central)" 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

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.

Although personal perference is not to have programs like Smiley Central installed on my computer, some people have asked me where they could download it. So for those folks who would like to have Smiley Central on their computer, I have included the following link to download their software and install if you wish.