These days most of the popular software on the Internet come with some or other sort of toolbars. If you are not careful enough and forget to uncheck the installation of such toolbars then you may end up having multiple unwanted toolbars in your web browsers. These toolbars are a nuisance to the users as they show advertisements, popup windows, hijack your home page and search settings and not to mention that you did not want them in the first place. The free Force Byte Detector is an anti-adware program that can detect and prevent installation of such toolbars, adware, unwanted software and PUPs on your Windows PC.
You can download Force Byte Detector from their website. The download is around three megabytes in size. The download is available as a portable application that can be run as soon as you download it without installing. It has to be run with administrator privileges for it to work properly. In order to run Force Byte Detector with proper credentials, you can right-click on the downloaded file Force Byte Detector.exe and select Run as administrator from the context-menu.
The user interface of the Force Byte Detector has been neatly divided into multiple tabs. Each tab is dedicated for a particular function, for example, there are separate tabs for scanning, cleaning up various items, protection and updates. In the Scan tab, you can click on the Scan button to scan your system for unwanted toolbars, adwares, potentially unwanted programs and other plugins.
The scan is pretty quick and when it detects an item, it shows an dialog box asking you whether you want to remove that item. On my test system, it detected Babylon toolbar. If you click the Yes button, that item is removed. The removal process involves closing down of all web browsers and the Windows Explorer and you may have to restart Windows for the complete removal.
Under the Cleanup tab, you can choose to clean your computer either automatically or manually. In the manual mode, you can select which portions of your PC you want to be cleaned. You can select various web browsers, internet settings, Windows settings and other application related settings to be cleaned. This cleanup not only removes the junk files but also protects your privacy by removing your usage fingerprints from the computer.
Under the Protection tab, you can choose to enable or disable protection for your PC. This protection protects you from BHO(browser hijacker objects), PUP(potentially unwanted programs), unwanted cookies, unwanted changes made to the HOSTS file, unwanted changes made to your web browsers (like changing the home page or search settings) etc. You can flip the protection on or off, by clicking on the Settings button and choosing Enable or Disable respectively.
Conclusion: Force Byte Detector Anti-Adware is a simple application that can detect and clean installed toolbars, adwares, PUPs and BHOs from your Windows PC. It can also prevent the installation of more toolbars in the future. You can use it in conjuction with your exisiting antivirus security product Ias it does not cause any conflict with you existing antivirus software.
You can download Force Byte Detector from http://www.forcebyte.nl/.
Amazing program one of my favorites besides: ADWcleaner and Junkware Removal Tool