A friend and I were using Google Talk to for voice chat but it seemed to regularly disconnect so we thought we would try out Yahoo messenger.

I downloaded it and installed it. SURPRISE. I now have a "Try AOL" icon on my desktop. I also have several different Yahoo features on my Start Menu and the Yahoo Toolbar is now installed into my Firefox browser ( didn't check Opera and MSIE. I don't want to know ). They also changed my home page to some Yahoo crap.

This upset me to no end so I uninstalled Yahoo stuff before I even tried it. I used the ADD/REMOVWE programs and got rid of it all, including Yahoo Toolbar but it didn't go away. I still have the damn thing. Had to just hide it.

This really upsets me. I thought Yahoo was one of those quality reputable companies but I now see they are just a typical internet company forcing thier uninvited crap down your throat.

The catch here was that you must choose CUSTOM SETUP and uncheck all the default extra crap that Yahoo sneaks in with the install. Either way, good luck uninstalling it.

Shame on them.

A great tool for getting rid of browser crapware that can't be uninstalled (or that keeps reinstalling itself) is hijackthis. Just do a web search for hijackthis.exe, you'll find download sites and help sites. It's not for the novice, but once you've learned the ropes you'll never give it up.

I tend to watch my taskmanager a lot. Like all the time.

I generally know what should be running and what should not.

When stuff sneaks in, I usually remove it, then >regedit>find all

Delete any references to the stuff, including directories.

Stormie gave me a really good program back in the day called StartupMonitor.exe(Mike Lin's). It alerts the user anytime anything tries to set itself to run at startup. I put it on every machine that I come in contact with.
http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml

You have to be careful, because there is another program called startupmonitor found on downloads.com and pcworld.com which is specifically the opposite, it is out and out spyware.

I love Google Talk so far. As far as AIM, Yahoo and ICQ goes, I use GAIM (http://gaim.sourceforge.net/). It's a multiclient chat tool like trillian only that it uses way way way less resources, i love it. Running on my pc are MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Skype and Gaim.

<-- uses Trillian (www.trillian.cc). GAIM can work, too.

I used to use Trillian but it's a memory hog now, even though i have all the memory and cpu i need. I'd rather have Gaim, its so much simple and light.