Google Chrome, Google Lively, Google Earth, and an untold number of other Google applications may install an update mechanism named googleupdate.exe, googleupdater.exe, or something similar.
The googleupdate may continually attempt to access the Internet without requesting permission and without providing an option to disable it.It also reports some data usage to the google servers which includes version numbers, language, operating system etc.
This behavior may persist even after the parent application has been removed.
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Contents
How to Remove GoogleUpdate.exe in XP?
- Go to Start >> Control Panel
- Open Administrative Tools >> Scheduled Tasks
- Locate GoogleUpdateTaskUser.exe in the scheduled task list
- Remove GoogleUpdateTaskUser from the scheduled tasks.
How to Remove GoogleUpdate.exe in Vista?
- Go to Start >> Control Panel
- Open Administrative Tools >> Task Scheduler
- Click Task Scheduler Library, locate GoogleUpdateTaskUser.exe
- Right click on it and select disable
That’s it.
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No, that’s not all there is to it. It’s persistent, tries to run as an automatic service, startup item, and scheduled task.
Use task manager to kill it.
Use SC to find the name of the service and uninstall it.
Find the file and delete it.
Delete scheduled tasks referring to it.
Delete startup items referring to it.
Finally, delete all references to anything containing GOOGLEU from the registry–including the containing hives down to the hexadecimal key.
Google releases some pretty darned evil software. Their updater installs itself to run under Local System credentials and is thus a bigger target for viral attack than software it is intended to protect.