When I have a customer tell me that their internet is very slow the first thing I do is check to see how many tool bars they have in Internet Explorer. I have seen some systems that have six or seven search bars. They only have half of the screen for viewing the website. Sometimes the tool bars are hiding, you can still see them if you right click in the tool bar area.

The big problem with these tool bars, besides the fact that they crowd out your viewing area, they all load into memory and take up valuable resources that will slow down your computer. It doesn't matter if you close the tool bar, if it is still installed it is hogging memory. If you go to your control panel and click on "add or remove programs" you will see them all listed among the programs installed on your system. Carefully go through and highlight a tool bar and then click uninstall. Continue to do this until you only have the one or two toolbars you actually want left.

The next question is: How did I get all of these? I don't remember downloading them.

The answer is that they come from many places.

• Some programs install a tool bar when you download the program.
• Some updates install a tool bar while installing the update.
• Game sites, coupon sites, sweepstake sites, news sites gambling sites, and even shopping sites install tool bars when you sign up on their sites.
• If you install Google Chrome it will ask to install the Google tool bar in Internet Explorer.

The best thing to do is read everything before you install or accept anything online. You should also check occasionally to make sure you aren't starting a collection of tool bars.

We can help with this CALL US for help removing toolbars.

Back to Blog