Fun Web Products Popular Screensavers Removal Instructions and Help
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What is Popular Screensavers?
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 looking for screensavers that are not part of this suite. You may be interested in the Tropical Reef, Take Action Motivational, or London By Night Screensavers. They are all beautifully created and easy to view.
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.
How Do I Know If I Have Fun Web Products Popular Screensavers Installed?
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.bin\MWSSRCAS.DLL
O2 - BHO: MyWebSearch Search Assistant BHO - { 00A6FAF1-072E-44cf-8957-5838F569A31D} - C:\Program Files\MyWebSearch\SrchAstt.bin\MWSSRCAS.DLL
O2 - BHO: mwsBar BHO - { 07B18EA1-A523-4961-B6BB-170DE4475CCA} - C:\Program Files\MyWebSearch\bar.bin\MWSBAR.DLL
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [MyWebSearch Email Plugin] C:\PROGRA~1\MYWEBS~1\bar.bin\mwsoemon.exe
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [MyWebSearch Email Plugin] C:\PROGRA~1\MYWEBS~1\bar.bin\mwsoemon.exe
O4 - Startup: MyWebSearch Email Plugin.lnk = C:\Program Files\MyWebSearch\bar.bin\MWSOEMON.EXE
O4 - Global Startup: MyWebSearch Email Plugin.lnk = C:\Program Files\MyWebSearch\bar.bin\MWSOEMON.EXE
O16 - DPF: { 1D4DB7D2-6EC9-47A3-BD87-1E41684E07BB} - http://ak.imgfarm.com/images/nocache/funwebproducts/ei/PopularScreenSaversFWBInitialSetup1.0.0.8.cab
How Do I Remove Popular Screensavers?
First, uninstall My Mail Signature from Add/Remove Programs
1) Click on Start, Settings, Control Panel
2) Double click on Add/Remove Programs
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.
My Web Search (Smiley Central or FWP product as applicable)
My Way Speedbar (Smiley Central or other FWP as applicable)
My Way Speedbar (AOL and Yahoo Messengers) (beta users only)
My Way Speedbar (Outlook, Outlook Express, and IncrediMail)
Search Assistant - My Way
4) Reboot your Computer and run HijackThis
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
7) Right-click and delete the folders for:
FunWebProducts
MyWebSearch
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.
