Many new software that you download from the internet come with toolbars and browser hijacker objects. If you are not careful during the installation, then you may end up having many different types of adware, toolbars, browser hijackers, potentially unwanted programs (PUP) and other pests. Usually your installed antivirus program takes care of such undesirable things but you can also use free AdwCleaner to detect and remove these unwanted items from your system. AdwCleaner can scan toolbars and hijackers in all the different browsers like Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Opera.
You can download AdwCleaner from the Xplode website. It supports all versions of Windows starting up from Windows XP. The download is a little over 1 megabytes portable application. It does not require installation, you can just download and run it. The window that opens up has a very simple interface. Just click on the Scan button for AdwCleaner to start scanning your system.
There are no options to set. The scan looks through various areas of your system like file system, shortcuts, registry and web browser settings. The detected items are automatically added to the list in the AdwCleaner window. When the scan is completed, you can go from one list to another to see what items have been detected and which of them should be removed. Then can click on the Clean button to get rid of any found items on your PC.
If you want to see what AdwCleaner has found in a report format, then just click on the Report button. This would cause a notepad windows to open up showing you the results. The results display a bit of information about your system, the AdwCleaner version, items found in various browsers and critical system areas like Windows registry.
AdwCleaner is a tiny little tool that can help you quickly get rid of adwares, toolbars, browser hijacker objects, potentially unwanted programs, malicious proxy settings and more. It is a portable program so it does not require any installation. In spite of being a portable application, it features an Uninstall button which can be used to delete the downloaded AdwCleaner program file.
You can download AdwCleaner from http://general-changelog-team.fr/.