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Monday, September 22, 2014

Getting rid of Sweet Page


Replacing the innards of your computer brings a host of problems, I find. Even if the migration of files is sweet, the accumulation of unwanted, intrusive add-ons is distinctly not so.

Drivers used to come on disks, and you had plenty of time to check what was actually there -- though I lost count of the times that Google Chrome came along, too.  Now, even if you are careful to load only by the "custom" path, the unwanted extras arrive.

Reloading Google Chrome brought a weird take-over of my search engine called "Sweet Page" -- which seems really odd and strange and all that, considering that Google has a perfectly good search engine of its own.  Sweet page calls itself a search engine, but it is merely an advertising tool, which gathers cookies like it has just come off a diet, and uses them to flash marketing across your screen, blocking off your view of what you want to see.  Believe me, my virus checker was going crazy trying to keep up with getting rid of the rubbish.

But how to get rid of this so-called search engine?  There are lots of ideas on the web, I found, but in the end I stumbled across a very simple solution.

On your Google or Google Chrome page, got up to the little grid in the top righthand corner of your ribbon.  It looks like three dashes, one under another.  Hit it, bringing up a menu, and run down the menu to settings. And you should bring up this screen.


Run your cursor down to Search, and then click on Manage search engines.

This will bring up a list, including Sweet Page.  Hover your mouse over it, and you will see a cross appear on the righthand side.  Hit the cross.  Firmly.  Do the same for any other search engines you're surprised to find there.  Then make one of the ones you do want your default.

Go out, close, and reboot. 

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