Wyatt Says...

• John the Electrician - February 13th, 2009 at 11:27 am

  I am a republican, and I usually feel the democrats have the “it’s not only acceptable, but really good” mentality. In a bi-partisan move; let us agree we both feel this way about Microsoft.

  Installation without authorization, .NET was allowed, but they over stepped the permission they were given, and no un-install option. Even if the un-install problem lies in FF itself, MS deployed an un-installable add-on. They took the time to make the add-on, but not the time to properly field test or support. So regardless where the root cause is, MS allowed it to propagate.
• GriffenJBS - February 13th, 2009 at 11:40 am

  Has anyone mentioned FFClickOnce? It’s is a third-party Firefox extension that also enables ClickOnce for client installations that have Firefox plus .NET Framework
• Harry - February 14th, 2009 at 5:28 pm

  Wyatt … just to say thank you for the uninstall information.
• thx - February 14th, 2009 at 11:05 pm

  thanks
• Ian Wright - February 15th, 2009 at 3:48 pm

  Thanks a lot, Pete! Solved the answer at one go. I dream of the day robots take over the world and, as their first act of imperial government, outlaw Windows. Except for use at Redmond, where it will be mandatory. And in hell, of course. But that goes without saying.
• Ian Wright - February 15th, 2009 at 3:51 pm

  I meant thanks to Wyatt. Sorry. Pete was the bloke who sent me the link.
• David Sisson - February 15th, 2009 at 7:11 pm

  Thanks a lot, Wyatt. Not only was this the location for the .NET issue, but the Java Quick Start was also there. I deleted both registry entries and VOILA, no more .NET or JQS.
• Beelzebub - February 18th, 2009 at 9:27 am

  Thanks! I already deleted this once but once again the MS “important” updates put it back.
• thanks!!!! - February 24th, 2009 at 12:02 pm

  Thank you for posting this — HUGE help!!!
• anonymous - March 4th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

  Thanks for this useful tip!

  Back to work now :)
• everlastingangst - March 9th, 2009 at 7:41 pm

  No one understands my pain… oh wait, wrong page.

  Thx for the tip Wyatt.
• Matti - March 15th, 2009 at 6:27 pm

  That the uninstall is disabled is coming from Firefox.
  The extensions are installed outside of Firefox and without the control of Firefox and Firefox simple can not uninstall such extensions because Firefox doesn’t know where files are dropped by the installer. The external addon installer could for example put files in the Firefox directory. That’s the reason why extensions installed with the registry are not uninstallable inside Firefox.

  The point is that every external extension installer should ask before installing and don’t do that silent.
• ander - March 21st, 2009 at 1:10 am

  Apparetly, a few more steps are required to really uninstall the plugin—see http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article08-600
• Wyatt O'Day - March 21st, 2009 at 9:16 am

  Thanks ander, I’ve added it to the main post.
• Sanders - March 21st, 2009 at 3:00 pm

  I think the question is: why the heck does Mozilla allow for extensions being installed outside Firefox’s control? do they want to repeat MS’s past mistakes regarding browser security?
• RickX - April 28th, 2009 at 10:55 am

  Hmmmm The government pushed out this patch and installed this “freak” of a thing on my machine at work. Can’t remove it without admin privs (can’t edit the registry).

  What does this do exactly? I can’t find much other than “it shouldn’t be there”, “opens up Firefox for attacks” – things like that. No specifics.

  Any other way to remove it than registry?
• Wyatt O'Day - April 28th, 2009 at 11:08 am

  RickX,

  It’s not malicious, despite what the multitude of imbeciles might suggest. If you can’t remove it, it’s no biggie.

  All it does is waste a little bit of time on Firefox startup. You can solve this problem by getting the gov to buy you a better computer.

  - Wyatt
• Michael - May 26th, 2009 at 1:09 pm

  Hmm, that’s weird, my uninstall button was working.
  Running Firefox 3.0.10 on Windows 7 RC (x86)
• Thanks! - June 3rd, 2009 at 10:51 am

  Thanks for the help.
• Andy Fore - June 3rd, 2009 at 11:08 am

  @Michael The reason your Uninstall button is working is due to an update to the actual extension from Microsoft. If you don’t have the update, only the Enable/Disable button should be functional for stopping the extension from doing whatever it is programmed to do.

  The update can be obtained here:

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=cecc62dc-96a7-4657-af91-6383ba034eab

  The fun part is that since the update is installed outside of the normal add-on mechanism for Firefox, you can’t get the update via the add-on update check.

  This is why people should work within the accepted system instead of just auto installing software (plugins, extensions, applications, etc.) automagically.

  Apple has been pinged on this with regards to Safari, Apple Update, and Bonjour for Windows.

  Andy
• Matt - June 23rd, 2009 at 8:55 am

  Hanselman has a good write-up on this.

  http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToRemoveTheNETClickOnceFirefoxExtension.aspx
• Rick Cain - June 30th, 2009 at 4:26 pm

  On a positive note, it is incompatible (at least for now) with the new Firefox 3.5 so FF mercifully disables the add-on for you.