removing SBC Self Support Tool

A year ago I was using SBC/Yahoo high speed internet. That service was fine, but when I moved, it was unavailable in my area. So I switched to Verizon.

I never cleaned up all the stuff that SBC/Yahoo installed on my PC. This morning, I found a directory called "C:\Program Files\SBC Self Support Tool". In that directory was a program called "Uninstall.exe". When I ran that, a dialog box popped up, telling me to use "Control Panel" > "Add or Remove Programs" to uninstall. But the Control Panel did not show any sign of the SBC Self Support Tool.

I did an internet search and found a suggestion to use Windows Live Safety Center Cleanup. I went to their site, and found myself facing a T&C form, scratched my head about that, and surfed away to look for another suggestion. Fortunately, I found Todd George's instructions. The Uninstall.exe program requires the argument "SBC". So I ran it like this:

C:\>"C:\Program Files\SBC Self Support Tool\Uninstall.exe" SBC

and it worked. A dialog popped up telling me the uninstall was in progress. At some point I got another dialog telling me to shut down all browsers, which I did. I also got another message telling me

Uninstall was unable to remove the following folder -

C:\Program Files\SBC Self Support Tool\SmartBridge

Please delete it manually after Uninstall is finished.


After the uninstall was complete, I found that the "SBC Self Support Tool" directory was not completely empty. There's still a subdirectory called "MFSS" which seems to contain an html manual for the internet service, support tool, etc. I don't mind deleting that... the SmartBridge directory has a dll file called SBHook.dll. Maybe I'll just leave it there.