Jim Guckin

Like me you may have abandoned the Internet Explorer browser for the more secure Firefox.  Well if you recently updated your computer, Microsoft may have snuck a vulnerability into Firefox without even telling you.  If you take a look at the installed add-ons in Firefox you might notice an add-on called Microsoft .net Framework Assistant. If your like me, you might not have remembered installing it, and it’s because you didn’t Microsoft did. The second thing that you’ll notice is that you cannot uninstall it as it is grayed out.  Well like me, you don’t like Microsoft putting possibly security holes in software that isn’t theirs, so you’ll want to remove it, and here’s how to do it.

NOTE: As always this fix requires you to modify your registry.  It is strongly recommended that you backup your registry prior to making any changes, so that in the unlikely event of problems you can restore the registry back to the way it was.

To remove the .NET Framework Assistant for Firefox from your computer, follow these steps:

1. Close FireFox (not sure if this is necessary, but a good rule of thumb)
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
3. Locate on of the keys below (depending on your operating systems) and then click the following registry subkey.For 32Bit computers:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions
   For 64Bit computers:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions
4. You’ll see a subkey called {20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b} delete it and reopen Firefox and you’ll see that it’s gone.
5. Log on with an account that has Administrator permissions.

Now you’re Firefox is purged of the uninvited .Net add on.  I have a problem with things being installed in Firefox without me choosing to install it.  I’ve seen a lot of outrage on it, so hopefully Microsoft has learned their lesson, but something tell me like usual they wont and this is just a start to their installing patches in other operating systems.