Recently I am seeing a lot of software embedding the Babylon Toolbar into their setup installers. Some of the example software that contains Babylon Toolbar are SUMo NoRK, AnVir Task Manager, ViStart, and The Web Blocker to name just a few. In fact CNET Download.com Installer used to have Babylon Toolbar but it has been replaced with Blekko. Whether it is Babylon, Blekko, MyStart by Incredibar or any other brands of toolbar, they are all the same. Some people may label these browser toolbar as virus or trojan but in fact it is simply an advertisement software (adware).
Although web browser toolbars such as Babylon Toolbar are optional, the biggest problem is they are enabled by default in most cases and unless you select the Custom installation method if there is one, the installer may not even tell you that it’s going to install the toolbar. So, after installing the software that you wanted to install, miraculously your web browser’s started to show an extra bar below the address bar, there’s a Babylon powered start page, and you’re searching on some unknown search engines by default.
I wanted to check out and test the Babylon Toolbar myself to see why are people complaining about the Babylon Toolbar.
As a test, I have 5 latest web browsers (Opera 12, Safari 5, Internet Explorer 9, Mozilla Firefox 16, Google Chrome 22) installed on my test system and then install the Babylon Toolbar from ViStart. First I noticed that SUMo NoRK installer downloads a number of files from powerpackdl.com and drops them in to temporary folder. I will point out that in addition to the Babylon toolbar which we’re looking at here, SUMo downloads a bucket load of other adware, possibly the most I’ve ever seen in a single installer. My advice is be VERY careful installing SUMo.
The Babylon Toolbar installer doesn’t have a cancel button and the X button to exit the window is also disabled. The only way to skip the installation of Babylon Toolbar is to select Custom installation and uncheck all 3 checkboxes. Take note of the 3 options which are Install Babylon Toolbar, Make Babylon search my homepage on my browsers, and Make Babylon my default search engine at the Babylon Toolbar installer.
SUMo recommends to install Babylon Toolbar by default
Something we have noticed that is creeping in to adware installers recently is doing the old and rather misleading trick of making the disable tick boxes hard to spot hoping you don’t notice them. Look at the below image, how many unsuspecting users would click agree without even noticing the tick boxes highlighted?
Hidden away tick boxes hoping you’ll miss them
After installing the Babylon Toolbar, we’ve noticed that Opera and Safari are pretty safe from the adware while parts of Internet Explorer 9, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome each contain traces of the Babylon Toolbar.
Uninstalling the Babylon Components
If you’ve accidentally installed the Babylon Toolbar, you can easily uninstall it by going to Control Panel -> Programs and Features (Add / Remove in XP) -> and uninstall Babylon toolbar and also BabylonObjectInstaller if there is an entry for it. It’s best to remove the toolbar entry 1st because it will open a browser window you have to close before the ObjectInstaller can be removed. Also check for an entry called “Browser Manager” which will also need removing if you have it.
Do note that it’s best to remove these entries BEFORE trying to clear Babylon from any of your browsers otherwise it will likely keep coming back.
Remove Babylon Toolbar in Internet Explorer 9
When you run Internet Explorer 9 after installation of the Babylon Toolbar, at the bottom of the web browser shows a bar saying “Several add-ons are ready for use”.
If you click the Don’t enable button, the Babylon Toolbar will be disabled by default.
Unfortunately after uninstalling the Babylon toolbar in Programs and Features, the Babylon Search page will still open by itself when you launch Internet Explorer. Moreover when you perform searches from the address bar, Internet Explorer will also search from Babylon Search. This is because the option “Make Babylon search my homepage on my browsers” and “Make Babylon my default search engine” from the Babylon Toolbar installer are not uninstalled.
Remove Babylon Search homepage on IE9
1. In Internet Explorer, press Alt+X and then O or select Internet Options
2. At Home page, click the Use default (go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157) button OR the Use blank button and click OK.
Remove Babylon default search engine on IE9
1. In Internet Explorer, press Alt+X and press M or select Manage add-ons
2. Click Search Providers on the left and in the window select Bing or another search provider and click the Set as default button.
3. Now select “Search the web (Babylon)” and click the Remove button to delete Babylon Search completely from the IE9 Search Providers.
Remove Babylon Toolbar in Firefox
This is one reason why we should always use the latest version because of improvements. Firefox no longer allows automatic installation of add-ons. So when you launch Firefox the first time after installing Babylon Toolbar, you will be prompted a software installation window. Simply click the Cancel button.
However, if you’ve accidentally clicked on the Install button, to remove it, press CTRL+SHIFT+A in Firefox, go to Extensions and then click the Remove button for Babylon. The Babylon Toolbar also automatically modifies the default Home Page for Firefox and also setting “Search the web (Babylon)” as the default search engine.
Remove Babylon Search homepage on Firefox
1. In Firefox, click the yellow Firefox button at the top left, go to Options and select Options.
2. At the General tab, click the Restore to Default button and click OK.
Remove Babylon default search engine on Firefox
1. In the Firefox search box click the drop down arrow at the Babylon icon and select Manage Search Engines
2. Select Search the web (Babylon) and then click the Remove button.
Remove Babylon default search engine on Firefox Address bar
1. In the address bar type about:config and press enter. Click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
2. Type babylon into the search box and you will be presented with a screen full on entries.
3. Right click on the following entries and select Reset. If you don’t have all of them don’t worry, just delete the ones you do have:
browser.babylon.HPOnNewTab
browser.newtab.url
browser.search.defaultenginename
browser.search.order.1
browser.search.selectedEngine
keyword.URL
You can do the same with all the other entries in the window but they are related to the extension which has been removed.
Remove Babylon Toolbar in Chrome
Google Chrome used to be slightly safer because the Babylon Toolbar failed to install any extension, but these days in more recent toolbar versions, it can also sometimes install a Chrome extension without asking. It obviously still manages to modify the default home page to Babylon Search and also the search engine as well.
Note: If the Babylon start page keeps coming back after applying the settings, reboot and make the changes again for them to stick.
Uninstall the Babylon Chrome Extension
This is pretty easy, simply right click on the extension icon and and select “Remove form Chrome”. Or go to the Options button -> Tools -> Extensions and remove it from there.
Remove Babylon Search startpage on Chrome
1. In Chrome, click the Options icon at the top right of the window and select Settings.
2. At the Settings window look for “On Startup”. Make sure “Open a specific page…” is selected and click Set Pages.
3. In the window that pops up, click on the X on the Babylon Search line. If there are no other entries in here, simply enter your chosen start page into the box and click OK.
Remove Babylon Search homepage on Chrome
1. In Chrome, click the Options icon at the top right of the window and select Settings.
2. At the Settings window look for “Appearance” and click Change.
3. In the Home page window change the content of the box to whatever you want to use when the Home button is clicked on such as “google.com”. Press OK.
Remove Babylon default search engine on Chrome
1. In Chrome, click the Options icon at the top right of the window and select Settings.
2. At the Settings window look for “Search”. To simply change the search engine to something else click the drop down and select another search provider.
3. To completely remove Babylon Search, click the Manage search engines… button.
4. Move the mouse cursor over the search you want to use and click Make default. Then hover over Search the web (Babylon) and click the X button on the right and click OK to remove Babylon from the search engines list.
The above methods have been tested and work at the time of writing. Do note these methods are for the Babylon Toolbar not the Babylon application itself which installs a lot more junk and can also be hard to remove. For example, the SUMo installer will actually offer you the Babylon application before offering the Babylon toolbar if you decline the application. Do be aware about the differences as using these listed methods alone will not remove the full Babylon application.
The methods above should also work on resetting other adwares or toolbars that overwrites your default home page and also search providers. You can also give automated adware cleaning tool such as AdwCleaner and Toolbar Cleaner a try if the above method doesn’t work for you. As you can see that many computer users are disgusted with these adware because they don’t provide a complete uninstallation when the user decides to uninstall it. I personally think that including ad-ware into a freeware is fine because the programmer needs to pay the bills, but then they could have selected a more genuine adware rather than some pesky ones.
Finally! Your method worked quite well for Chrome. I went for months without Chrome because I just couldn’t get it all removed without it coming back. Huge thanks!
–ed
I’m wondering how much developers get paid to include this kind of adware in their freeware, and what is the benefit for adware editors? Or maybe this is just a conspiracy to annoy people? They seem to be deploying a lot of efforts to achieve this goal. Hosting a website to distribute a freeware is not even that much costly, and could be amortized by donations.
Thanks for the removal method anyway :-)
Thanks for the fix to delete Babylon. Unfortunate, the software may have morphed to overcome your solutions. I’ve tried everything and it keeps coming back. I finally went to spybot and got most of it deleted. It no longer controls my mozilla browser, but it still apears as an entry in my registry. Spybot would delete it, but it comes back. I’ve decided to reload my entire system and never download free stuff again. I suspect even Babylong can’t survive a reformat.
Perhaps you could tell us what program installed the toolbar in the first place? It’s useful so we can check for any bundled versions of the toolbar causing issues.
I just tried a clean after installing only the toolbar itself and through SUMO which is updated often and the posted methods worked fine, but you HAVE TO MAKE SURE all Babylon related items have been uninstalled from Control Panel before hand or it WILL keep coming back.
not all being success for me. i use firefox 12 and after restart my computer, search at address bar still exist and string in about:config reset again to babylon.
Make sure you have uninstalled the Babylon entries through Control Panel before trying to removing anything from Firefox. The steps above still work fine removing the Babylon toolbar, but if it’s still installed will keep coming back.
… Hi, muslih!!! …
… You said that you are using >> firefox 12 << …
… You need to update your version of Firefox 12 to Firefox 17.0.1, if you haven't updated it to the most current version of Firefox yet … if you have already updated Firefox to the most current version, then forget my reply here …
… Mick …
thank you for the tut.was able to remove babylon search
Help! Babylon has taken over my IE and I can’t even start up Explorer to make these changes. I have Vista and not a lot of extra memory or RAM so I am assuming that it is bogging it down so much it can’t even respond. I have removed all the Babylon files that I see in Control Panel. Any advice?
thanks
Thank Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
I unchecked all the “install babylon” stuff I found under the custom install – it ignored me and installed itself every where. Trying the manual method to remove it didn’t work, indeed, even after that and running Revo uninstaller, it still came back in my browser when clicking New Tab, etc. SpybotS&D finally removed the entire kaboodle.
After trying numerous other ‘suggestions’ from other sources to remove Babylon from Firefox, I think this solution actually works. The accuracy of the facts and the detail you supplied made the process relatively easy. Thanks much. It’s too bad that Firefox doesn’t cut Babylon off at the pass at the very beginning, and it’s pretty disgusting that neither party shows much remorse.
I came across your article only after I had explored and tried many things from the web over a day’s time. The set of activities below is the one that worked. I was amazed in how many places in the registry the word “babylon” appeared (which I deleted. Babylon is gone…at least for now. The process:)
1. Do a computer search for the word “babylon” and delete all instances of the word (look at context it is found in
2. Open Windows Task Manager ( Cntrl/Shft/Esc ) and stop the Babylon.com process, if listed in any of the columns..
3. In Windows control Panel: Add/Remove programs, uninstall Bablyon.com program, if present.
4. OPEN THE WINDOWS REGISTRY EDITOR (search for REGEDIT.EXE). Keep seaching the REGISTRY for babylon (find next…find next), and keep deleting the registry entries that contain it, until the registry no longer finds any entries.
Once I cleaned the registry, and then cleaned the trash buckets on each of the two users of the laptop, babylon no longer appeared on the computer. (So far…..)
Thanks for your post. I’ll save it just in case….
FA
Thanks man U ar d BOMbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
Babylon wanted to wreck my online experience
thanks Ray
Great solution! So many other searches get you to download all kinds of supposed ‘freeware’, this is a simple but effective answer. Many thanks!
Really good post It solves all the problems, Thank you..!
I have removed everything I can find and it still comes up. So your removal method doesnt work for Chrome.
Had BOTH blekko and Babylon on IE. Firefox, Chrome – whatt disaster. Babylon Can’t be removed via add remove, can’t remove via manage toolbars. My sites were running slower, pages taking a long time to open, and my computer would freeze on me regularly.. Hmm, and some consider this not to be Malware? Blekko can be removed via add remove, but still follow the bottom instructions to get rid of all remnants
To remove, went to Regedit, clicked f3 amd typed Babylon, deleted. and then kept typing f3 until I removed Every file or folder that had the word babylon attached to it.. so far so good..
This is all pretty useful stuff but sadly it does not remove Babylon completely and it keeps coming back even though it is no longer listed as an add on/extension/or listed as a search provider. The reason for this is because it has embedded it self in Firefox preferences so that when you search a term from the navigation pane hey presto Babylon search is back to annoy you yet again.
The solution is to remove the entries for it from the preferences file stored under your romaing profile:
C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\had0nuwf.default\prefs.js using notepad.
Pretty sure Chrome is set up similarly. :)
Chrome: followed above. Used x to remove from “Default Search Engines” which removed
Babylon from there, but it still remains at “open this page” and I cannot delete this, Obviously have not checked the button to select it.
Have made Google default search engine but I would like to get rid of it at “open this page” too.
I have done everything listed above. When I open IE the default home page appears, But if I open a new tab babylon search page comes. Also in Firefox If I use address bar for searching, babylon search comes. In firefox I opened about:config and typed “babylon”, and I’ve seen few strings whose values are related to babylon search.
Thank you Raymond for a thorough review as always, as the toobar install with certain software packages is really annoying and unwanted by many users, i would recommend that any program is installed as custom everytime and rarely takes any more of your time.
Thank you Raymond.
Once again you have cleared up another nagging little problem I didn’t know how to get rid of myself.
(What a Noobie/Rookie I am, but thanks to you I’m learning bit by bit to be better)
Yours respectfully
Starlight
this is a good 1 for a lot of us out there. nicely done
Morning!
I HATE Tool bars or anything else that takes away Valuable Premium real estate on my computer’s desktop!
I Hate it that companies try to be crafty and SNEAK these things in especially after downloading so-called free software.
To REMOVE this Babylon Toolbar . . . simply download SPYBOT . . . Search and Destroy!!!
Here is the direct link:
safer-networking.org/index2.html
I LOVE SPYBOT and YOU will too.
This is new nuclear bomb for internet user after ask toolbar.
Hates such stuffs by companies and vendors who force this types of software on users.
Nice post by Raymond for those who affected by this type “BOMB”