Q. How do I remove Scour Search from my browser?

Scour is a search “aid” for web browsers and a toolbar; it is a rogue search engine redirector that is included with downloads of various shareware installers (you know, the ones you have to be careful enough to unclick the “Install this along with” button every time).  Scour makes money by sending your search links to commercial advertising sites instead of the one you chose. These sites can in turn redirect you to porn or other sites.

In general, you cannot trust the uninstallers provided by software manufacturers who engage in these practices. Here is how to manually remove Scour and other rogue search toolbars from your browsers.

Firefox:

Go to Manage Search Engines in Firefox and remove any entries for Scour

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-bar-easily-choose-your-search-engine

Check if you have Scour Toolbar in your Firefox menu > Add Ons and remove any items for Scour. Check both the Plug ins tab and the Extensions tab (on older versions, Tools >  Add-ons).

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-remove-add-ons

Set the Home page to the search engine of your choice (the default Google search entry is http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q= )

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/How%20to%20set%20the%20home%20page?s=Set+home+page&r=1&as=s

Remove Scour from the search engine default for unrecognized pages

1. In the address bar enter “about:config” and hit Enter
2. Bypass the warranty screen(s) by clicking
3. On the next screen enter “Scour” in the Filter window (a search in the config)
4. If Scour shows up, highlight each of these entries one at a time, right click and choose “reset”.
5. When finished, close the file.

Chrome 

Internet Explorer

If you don’t have any preferences and settings in Internet Explorer that you particularly want to keep, you can do a reset of the IE Settings http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/browser-hijacking.aspx

Otherwise you can remove it manually

First delete the Scour Toolbar from Add Ons

1. Open Internet Explorer and click on “Tools”.
2. Select “Manage Add Ons”,  Click on Toolbars and Extensions, and search for the Scour in the list of add-ons.
3. Right Click on the Scour Toolbar entry and select “disable” (or highlight and click the Disable button).
4. Click on “Ok”
5. Now select Search Providers.
6. Left click to highlight “Scour – Search Socially” and click Remove button to remove
7. Do the same with “Scour Search”
8. Click on “Ok”
9. Restart Internet Explorer

Next restore your home page to the one you want.

http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/homepagerestore.aspx

Remove Scour from the search engine default for unrecognized pages (note this requires editing your Registry. Back it up first.  If you are not confident, refer the work to someone experienced)

1. Open “RegEdit” through the launch menu.
2. Find this entry
3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\About URLs\Tabs
4. Change the entry that points to Scour search, to the search engine you want (Google for example).

Finishing up

After removing and resetting, I would recommend starting in Safe mode (F8) and running Malwarebytes or SuperAntiSpyware to check the machine and registry.  Running CCleaner to clean the registry wouldn’t hurt either.  Then test your browser(s) by opening them and typing in some nonsense in the URL/location bar to make sure the defaults have been successfully changed.

You may have the Scour Uninstaller still remaining on your machine

Go to C:\Program Files\ and delete any folder related to Scour
Go to C:\Program Files (X86) and delete any folder related to Scour

Restart the machine in Safe Mode (F8) and run CCleaner

1. Open CCleaner,
2. Click Tools,
3. If you see Scour, select Scour toolbar from the list,
4. Click Uninstall.
5. Run the Registry tool,
6. Run the cleaner.

Manual removal of files: Search your computer for these files

Files:

• C:\Program Files\scourtoolbar\install.ico
• C:\Program Files\scourtoolbar\scourtoolbar.dll
• C:\Program Files\scourtoolbar\toolbar.ini
• C:\Program Files\scourtoolbar\uninstall.exe
• C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch\SCOURTOOLBAR[1].EXE-1BE5D268.pf

Registry values:

• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\scourtoolbar.SCOURTOOLBAR
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AppDataLow\Software\scourtoolbar
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SCOURTOOLBAR
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\scourtoolbar.SCOURTOOLBAR
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\scourtoolbar