I am still around and been busy testing out a lot of stuff. One of the things which I’ve tested and noticed is that when you install Norton 2010, it also automatically installs plugins to Firefox. If you have Norton Antivirus 2010, you should have a plugin called Norton IPS 2.0 and if you have Norton Internet Security 2010, it also comes with Norton IPS 2.0 together with Norton Toolbar 4.5. The IPS plugin is the Norton Intrusion Prevention System which guards against malware being delivered to your system via an exploit of a software vulnerability. The Firefox add-on specifically looks for attacks using security holes that may exist in the browser. This feature is not really essential because other functions of Norton will be able to deal with any malware that tries to run, regardless of its method of installation.
Sometimes we have too many things going on in Firefox and we don’t need extra those extra plugins. Unfortunately you cannot easily uninstall both Norton IPS and Norton Toolbar plugins by clicking the Uninstall button because it is disabled or grayed out. If you’ve searched around, most of the methods to remove the Norton plugins is by deleting the extension folders but that doesn’t work in the latest Norton 2010 products. Here is how to remove the Norton IPS 2.0 and Norton Toolbar 4.5 from the latest Firefox 3.6.
The easiest method to remove the 2 Norton Firefox plugin is to simply disable them from Firefox add-ons window. Go to Tools > Add-ons, select the plugins to highlight it and then click the Disable button. Trust me, by doing that the 2 plugins will not be loaded into Firefox. I know this because Process Hacker and AppMonitor tells me so.
From Process Hacker, I get to know that this file IPSFFPl.dll is used for Norton IPS 2.0 and coFFPlgn.dll is used for Norton Toolbar 4.5. Just run Process Hacker, double click on the firefox.exe process to open the process properties and go to the Modules tab. After disabling both Norton plugins from Firefox, this 2 files is no longer shown in the Modules tab, which means it is not loaded and doesn’t take up extra system resource.
And as for AppTimer, it is a tool to measure and benchmark the start-up time of Firefox on my system. I ran 10 execution to get the average startup time of Firefox and compared the results. With Norton IPS 2.0 and Norton Toolbar 4.5 “enabled”, the average Firefox startup time is 0.95925. But when I disabled both plugins, the startup time drops to 0.86703.
If you still don’t like to see both Norton plugins in Firefox, here’s how to remove it from the list.
1. Run Firefox, go to Tools > Add-ons. Select Norton IPS 2.0 and click Disable. Then select Norton Toolbar 4.5 and click Disable.
2. Close Firefox.
3. Simultaneously press Win+R to bring up the run window and type: %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles and hit the Enter key.
4. You should see your Firefox profile folder that has random letters and numbers followed by .default. Double click on that folder and open the extensions.rdf file with a text editor such as Notepad++ or Wordpad.
5. Delete this 2 lines that has the following number and save the file.
{BBDA0591-3099-440a-AA10-41764D9DB4DB}
{2D3F3651-74B9-4795-BDEC-6DA2F431CB62}
Try launching Firefox now and you should not be seeing Norton IPS 2.0 and Norton Toolbar 4.5 in the Firefox add-ons window. If you still do, that means you did something wrong. If you’re stuck at step 3, what you can do is search for the file extensions.rdf and open it with a text editor. For your information, the IPSFFPl.dll file that is responsible for the Norton IPS is protected by Norton 2010 and you cannot delete or rename it. Even if you managed to delete it in Safe Mode, the files will be automatically re-created.
If you have Norton 360 v3 installed or Norton 2009 installed, you can easily uninstall the Norton IPS 1.0 and Norton Toolbar 3.7 by deleting this 2 files {7BA52691-1876-45ce-9EE6-54BCB3B04BBC} and {8545daff-ad1e-493f-a37e-eed1ac79682b} from C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\extensions\