You’re just not going to convince everyone. People get used to using a browser like Internet Explorer and simply don’t want to try something new. Perhaps they download Firefox just so they can say they gave it a try, but quickly return to their browser of choice. Others may not use IE, but simply do not like Firefox either, for whatever reason. However, I think the main reason to remove Firefox is for upgrading. No doubt millions have downloaded and installed Firefox 3 and continue to do so, but there are some potential conflicts with older versions.

I experienced this myself recently. I installed FF3 just after it came out and began having trouble with soon after. I was slow to act, but I finally saved my Bookmarks and used the default Firefox uninstaller, thinking that would remove all traces of the browser. Unfortunately, that was not the case and my new installation of Firefox 3 had the same problems. Being the procrastinator that I am, I let Firefox drive me crazy for about a month, then decided to look further into the matter. What I found out from other FF users was that normal uninstall programs did not remove all traces of my old version of Firefox and this was causing conflicts with FF3.

I searched for and read seval guides to removing Firefox, and quickly realized they were not all providing the same information. So, which one to follow? I finally came accross the article below from TweaksGuides.com, which seemed correct and after going through the steps, proved to be the correct method for completely removing all traces of Firefox. It is also very easy to follow and computer users of any experience level should be able to perform these steps without any trouble. If you’re at all conserned about messing with the Windows registry, just be sure to back it up before performing these steps.

1. Backup your bookmarks as a Bookmarks.html file. In Firefox 2 go to the Bookmarks menu, select ‘Organize Bookmarks’, then select File>Export. In Firefox 3, go to the Bookmarks menu, select ‘Organize Bookmarks’, then select ‘Import and Backup’>Export HTML. Note the difference between .HTML and .JSON Bookmark files is explained in more detail in the Advanced Tweaking section of the guide.

2. Go to Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs in Windows XP; or Control Panel>Programs & Features in Windows Vista, and if a ‘Mozilla Firefox’ entry (or similar) exists, select it and click Change/Remove and uninstall it. During uninstallation, tick the ‘Remove my Firefox personal data and customizations’ box as well.

3. Go to your \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox directory and delete it and all of its contents if it still exists.

4. Delete the following directories if they exist:

In Windows XP -

\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Mozilla

\Documents and Settings\[Username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla

In Windows Vista -

\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Mozilla

\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\

Note that this will delete all of your bookmarks and saved settings, so make sure you’ve backed up your bookmarks as covered in step 1. You might also want to note down any passwords which you might otherwise forget.

5. Find and remove all Firefox/Mozilla-related entries in the Windows Registry. Using the Windows Registry Editor (Start>Run>Regedit), delete the following keys – that is, right click on their name in the left pane of Registry Editor and select Delete:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxHTML]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxURL\]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Applications\firefox.exe]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MozillaPlugins]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\mozilla.org]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins]

Note: If you also have Mozilla Thunderbird or any other Mozilla products installed, make sure to only uninstall entries under the keys above which relate directly to Firefox by name.

Firefox provides many more functions, a whole host of add-ons, tools, skins, you name it. It is also faster and more secure from the minute you install it. What’s even better is there are some simple tweaks that will make this browser run even faster than it does “out of the box”. You don’t have to be a computer geek to make these adjustments if you follow the instructions carefully.

The browser sends out TCIP packets whenever you request (visit) a web page. These packets are sent one at a time for all information including text, images, css (style sheets), and the HTML. The speed at which pages are displayed in your browser is limited by this and the fact that the packets are limited 1.5k of information at a time. A perfect solution for this is to simply have Firefox send multiple packets at the same time. This tweak is called “pipelining” and allows the Firefox browser to run much faster.

Note: These tweaks are great if you have a high-speed Internet connection, but will have little effect for dial-up users.

The first step is to start up Firefox and type in “about:config” (without the quotes) in the address bar and hit enter. This brings up to configuration page. Next type in “pipelining” (again without quotes) in the Filters bar. Now you are ready to start making the tweaks. Be careful but don’t worry if you make a mistake. You can always right click on the line you changed and select reset to change it back to the original setting.

Enable Pipelining.
Find “network.http.pipelining”, right click on that line and select “toggle” if it is not set to yes. If the value is set to yes, then leave as it is. Next find “network.http.proxy.pipelining” and make sure the value is set to true in the same manner.

Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″, Type should be set to integer. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

Setting “maxrequests”. Now scroll down until you see the line that says “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests”. Right click on that line and select “modify”. Here you simply enter the number 30 and click OK. Now Firefox will request up to 30 packets at a time. Keep in mind that setting this number higher than 30 will not increase the speed even further. Web pages can only send so much information at a time.

And there you have it. You should be very pleasantly surprised at how much faster Firefox downloads web pages, even large heavy pages like those on Myspace.

I’ve included this video so you can see these tweaks at work, but it is not complete and I don’t think the last one is used. Just follow the directions above.