Introduction

I find AVG toolbar annoying and gets in the way. I'm able to disable it from the Firefox "Tools" -> "Add-ons" dialog. The AVG extension(s) present cannot uninstall via this dialog as the button is greyed out. So what should I do?

Some background to Firefox extensions

There are three ways to install extensions in firefox.

1. Installing an extension from a web site will typically put it in:

1

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<some random id>.default\extensions

2. Create a 'link' file which points to a location on the file system:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

rem Inside this folder:
cd C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<some random id>.default\extensions

rem Create a file like:
notepad.exe myextension@mydomain

rem This has a single line with the contents:
<drive>:\Path\to\firefox-plugin\

3. Install an extension in via the windows Registry which is the option taken by AVG.

Removing AVG extension

To remove the extension from the registry you need to use Regedit.exe and go to:

1

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions

Here you will see the AVG extension entries to there location inside the AVG install. Deleting these entries and restart Firefox. If you look at the "Tools" -> "Add-ons" dialog now AVG is gone!

You could also remove the Firefox extensions installed on disk. For me this was installed in:

1
2

C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8\Firefox
C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG8\Toolbar\Firefox