. . . seems to be Microsoft's latest and (so far?) most desperate attempt to get you to use it's Bing search engine.
As another blog said:
Typically what I don't like about Microsoft: They act as if they know better how I want my desktop to look and that they know better what search engine I want to use and what I want my homepage to be.... Bing Desktop, one of the most annoying apps you may install that isn't a virus.I don’t use Bing very often. Neither does the majority of the Internet — a fact that must upset Microsoft. In the last 14 years, Google has snapped up the vast majority of the search market by being the fastest, cleanest, most accurate way to search. ...
That is preposterous to say the least, invasive and absurd; it is yet another Big Brother attitude of the worst kind!
So what does Bing Desktop do? It is nothing but a big and in my opinion ugly search box in the middle of the desktop. Plus they can show you varying desktop backgrounds and naturally they change your home page and your default search engine.
After the installation Bing Desktop gives you the choice of three options:
Why does M$ (Microsoft) do that? Just look at Google; Google makes billions of $ with their search engine and M$ desperately wants to get a larger slice of that pie.
Enough ranting now. How do we get rid of it?
If you are still in Windows Update right click on the "Bing Desktop" update and then click on "Hide update".
If Bing Desktop is already installed go to Control Panel, Programs and Features; find Bing Desktop in the list, highlight it and then click Uninstall to remove Bing Desktop.
As usual I welcome comments and suggestions right here in the blog. Thank you in advance.
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14 comments:
Can't agree with you more! Bing Desktop is not a useful app for me and having it in Windows Update is really annoying, making me determined to get rid of it.
Bing Desktop is not listed as one of the programs in the uninstall feature of the Control Panel
Anonymous, if it is not listed then it is not installed. Send me a message if you want help.
Bing Desktop is not listed in my programs, I have tried to rollback to a day before the last download from Microsoft, didn't help.
How can I get rid of this thing, and what is the number of the download, so I can protect my other computers from this crap.
Ann
Ann,
In some aspects your post makes no sense, sorry.
In all cases I have seen Bing Desktop was ALWAYS listed as an installed program and thus removal with standard Windows means was no issue.
Just "rolling back to a day before the last download from Microsoft" does not address the problem if Bing Desktop was installed earlier than what you roll back to.
And please, what do you mean with "the number of the download"?
You protect your other computers by NEVER just blindly installing any update that Microsoft offers; that is what you do when you accept the default "Express" choice. Always select "Custom" and look at what M$ wants to install; then make an educated choice.
If you choose to reply let's take the details out of the blog and send a personal email to the address at the end of the "Welcome" section of this blog; thank you.
Hey there Eike,
Funny you said that "Bing Desktop was ALWAYS listed as an installed program and thus removal with standard Windows means was no issue." Sadly, this is not the case for me either.
Bing desktop appears in the middle of my screen, and cannot be removed by traditional means, such as Programs and Features, nor by checking for installed updates.
Sadly, I'm still unable to find any other results from any search engine on how to remove it properly.
Ray
Ray,
To uninstall Bing Desktop from Windows Vista or from Windows 7, follow these steps:
Click Start
Click Control Panel.
Click Programs and Features.
In the Uninstall or change program list, click Bing Desktop, and then click Uninstall.
Follow the instructions.
If it's not listed in Programs and Features:
Look on the top left and click on View installed updates. Wait until the list is completely loaded; Bing Desktop should be listed and can be uninstalled by UN-checking the check mark in front of the entry.
This is from Microsoft's KB article article 2694771 at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2694771
You may have tried "many search engines" but you did nor ask Microsoft, did you?
I stupidly installed the Bing Desktop - HATED IT - Then tried to remove it.... and now even though the program files have been removed from my computer (and registry) - I am stuck with the Bing image as my desktop image now, and cannot get it off or restore my old desktop image. Can anybody please help me? I also see three files that appear to be new to my computer: "STLEP", "plts", and "wptls" .......... Does anybody recognize these three files - that are running on my computer when it starts??? I cannot even remove (stop) these files from running through the task manager? And although Bing Desktop is removed - I cannot get this one image off of my desktop - (it is the same image that Bing had on their webpage the day I installed the Bing Desktop). The image doesn't change - but I cannot remove or replace it. HELP !!!!!!
@Scott,
Two things:
1. You don't need to submit a reply 2 or 4 or 5 times. All comments await my moderation before they get published.
2. The solution to your problem is in my reply to a previous post; it immediately precedes your comment.
Like you (I think), I check each update without blindly accepting them (Do I really want all the Language packs?). But it gets a bit tedious... I 'hid' Bing v1.0. Then I 'hid' Bing v1.1. I see today I need to 'hide' Bing v1.2. And every so often, there's a *lot* of optional updates, it's easy to miss something you don't want.
What I'd like is a way to tell Microsoft 'Don't install *@#^&%$ Bing Desktop!. Ever!!'.
It's just a fantasy, but...
Anonymous,
As I said in the blog post "Microsoft's latest and (so far?) most desperate attempt to get you to use it's Bing search engine".
And they get ever more desperate it seems!
Yes, I too grind my teeth every time I have to "hide" that gunk.
The only way to protest would be to switch to Ubuntu (or any other Unix system). And by happenstance that would be the only "words" Microsoft would understand.
Hi there Eike,
I just came across your blog and I hope you can help me make sense of this. I recently upgraded from 500GB's to 1TB and I was a little surprised to see that I only have 295GB's left available. So today I ran my trusty old SpaceMonger program and I was amazed to see that I had two occurrences of Bing Desktop on my PC, each of them eating up 162GB's on my hew hard drive. I never use Bing and disable it wherever I can.
I tried to wipe the cache but couldn't delete it. I also went to Control Panel to delete Bing Desktop but it does not appear there. Nor in my list of installed programs when I use something else like CCleaner to see the program list.
From reading comments I wonder if I have got infected with this by Windows Update, but why is it installed in two places? And how can I wipe the cache and delete the whole thing from my PC?
I'd really appreciate your comments.
Many thanks,
Gordon
I can't uninstall Bing because when I click uninstall, I get a pop up that says "an unidentified program is trying to access your computer"... so what next?
To the authors of the last two comments;
I can not give detailed tech help here in the blog. If you want help two things:
1. You will have to pay for it, sorry. It's my job.
2. Send me a personal email to the address on the "Welcome" section of the blog and I will mail instructions on how to prepare for remote support and we can go from there.
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