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Skype installing EasyBits Go Crapware on your PC without asking - How to remove it
Brandon Davenport
It appears that Skype is sneakily installing crapware onto your system and isn’t giving you the option to opt out. When users were running Skype and notified that Skype needed third-party access to an executable called easybitsgo.exe, they were a little weirded out. Since they hadn’t installed anything called “Easybitsgo” and they had never installed any add-ons for Skype, the immediate thought was do a virus scan as fast as possible… but that wasn’t neccisary unfortunately.
It turns out that the program seemingly relient on Skype is legit and was actually installed when the user installed Skype. Easybits is a company that builds crappy games and latches on to other companies to secretly install their crappy software. You know when you buy a new PC and all that bloating crapware is installed? Easybits is one of those heartless companies, and their partnered with HP, Dell, Acer and now, Skype.
How to remove Easybits Go Crapware
Note: We found these instructions on Blog Technical (the best ones available right now)
- Disable and remove 3rd party access to the easybitgo.exe file in Skype via Options > Advanced > Advanced Settings > Manage other programs’ access to Skype
- Remove the Easybits Go program via the Install/Uninstall panel under your system’s control panel
- Exit Skype and make sure the Skype.exe is not running in the list of running processes (via Task Manager). Also temporarily disable Skype from starting automatically when Windows starts.
- Then restart your computer since the program will still be is use by the system.
- Once restarted, go to [Drive Letter]:\ProgramData or [Drive Letter]:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data and permanently delete theEasybits GO folder.
- Remove whatever shortcuts it may have placed in the start menu and desktop.
- If you are confident enough to dig around in your registry, go toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software and delete the entire EasyBits folder (thanks Christopher)
- Go to the Windows\Prefetch directory and look for the file EASYBITSGO.EXE-364DAFD6.pfand delete it. Also do a search for ezPMUtils.dll and delete them all.
- If you are on Windows 7, delete the go folder in this directory - Users > [YOUR USERNAME] >AppData > Roaming (thanks Lesa)
This is the new Skype, hope you like it
If you haven’t heard, Microsoft has purchased Skype for 8.5 gazzilion dollars, and Microsoft want’s to turn Skype into a money printing machine. When asked about adding more ads to Skype, CEO Tony Bates said “Given the size of our base…it seems like a natural monetization extension,” and as we look on to see this crapware arrangement they’ve developed with Easybits, we can only watch as a once great VOIP client gets sucked out of the “keep people connected” market and into the “make more money” market.
