How to Delete Spigot Toolbar (Adware/PUP)

What is Spigot Toolbar? And how does it function?

Spigot Toolbar is a program that offers new tab functionality and allows growing revenue from advertising. Spigot is a legitimate company that offers digital marketing solutions and designs personalized toolbars for users. Although the services it offers might seem useful for businesses, a lot of users have complained about getting unknown and unwanted toolbars that has caused them some browsing-related issues since they installed this toolbar. And apart from the sudden appearance of unknown and unwanted toolbars, users also noticed the sudden increase in the amount of ads whenever they browse the internet. This isn’t surprising as the Spigot Toolbar is actually categorized as both an ad-supported program and a potentially unwanted one.
Once installed, it will modify the settings of the browsers installed in your computer. These modifications involve changing the default home page and new tab page of your browsers without any permission. As a result, every time you browse the internet, you will be bombarded with tons of ads – you may see pop-ups, banners, in-text links and other sponsored content from third parties. And if you think that these ads are harmless, think again as some of them could reroute you to suspicious websites. Some of these websites may ask you to download an update or a software, while some might display some alarming alert telling you that your computer is infected with some harmful virus. Getting redirected to these sites is not uncommon for an adware like Spigot Toolbar. So if you want to avoid encounters with these kinds of sites, you need to get rid of this dubious toolbar.
In addition, Spigot Toolbar could also monitor and track your browsing-related activities in order to obtain information from you. The harvested information includes the websites you visit frequently, ads you clicked, browsing history, search queries and more. The information might be shared with its affiliated third parties and will be used to generate more sponsored content to increase its revenue. Thus, there really is no sense in keeping this program installed in your computer.
How does Spigot Toolbar travel the web?
The Spigot Toolbar travels the web via software bundles that are found on free sharing sites or peer-to-peer networks. It is added as one of the optional components and stats hidden in the package unless you select the Advanced or Custom setup during the installation. Hence, the aforementioned setup must be used every time you install this kind of software package to avoid unwanted installation of programs like Spigot Toolbar.
Make sure to follow each one of the instructions given below to delete Spigot Toolbar from your computer.
Step 1: Start by opening the Task Manager by simply pressing the Ctrl + Shift + Esc keys.
Step 2: Next, go to Processes and look for the processes named “Spigot Toolbar” and then right click on each one of them and select End Process or End Task to kill their processes.

Step 3: Then open the Control Panel. To do so, tap the Windows key + R, then type in appwiz.cpl and then click OK or press Enter.

Step 4: Look for Spigot Toolbar and any suspicious program and then Uninstall them.

Step 5: Close all the browsers affected by Spigot Toolbar. If you’re having a hard time closing them, you can close them using the Task Manager just tap on Ctrl + Shift + Esc.
Step 6: After you open the Task Manager, go to the Processes tab and look for the infected browser’s process and end it.
Step 7: Edit your Hosts File

Tap the Win + R keys to open then type in %WinDir% and then click OK.
Go to System32/drivers/etc.
Open the hosts file using Notepad.
Delete all the entries containing Spigot Toolbar.
After that, save the changes you’ve made and close the file.

Step 8: Reset all your browsers to default to their default state.
Google Chrome

Launch Google Chrome, press Alt + F, move to More tools, and click Extensions.
Look for Spigot Toolbar or any other unwanted add-ons, click the Recycle Bin button, and choose Remove.
Restart Google Chrome, then tap Alt + F, and select Settings.
Navigate to the On Startup section at the bottom.
Select “Open a specific page or set of pages”.
Click the More actions button next to the hijacker and click Remove.

Mozilla Firefox

Open the browser and tap Ctrl + Shift + A to access the Add-ons Manager.
In the Extensions menu Remove the unwanted extension.
Restart the browser and tap keys Alt + T.
Select Options and then move to the General menu.
Overwrite the URL in the Home Page section and then restart the browser.

Internet Explorer

Launch Internet Explorer.
Tap Alt + T and select Internet options.
Click the General tab and then overwrite the URL under the homepage section.
Click OK to save the changes.

Step 9: Hold down Windows + E keys simultaneously to open File Explorer.
Step 10: Navigate to the following directories and look for suspicious files associated to Spigot Toolbar and delete it/them.

%USERPROFILE%\Downloads
%USERPROFILE%\Desktop
%TEMP%

Step 11: Close the File Explorer.
Step 12: Empty the Recycle Bin.
Follow the advanced instructions below to ensure the removal of Spigot Toolbar using [product-name] as well as all the file residues it left behind.
Perform a full system scan using [product-code]. To do so, follow these steps:

Turn on your computer. If it’s already on, you have to reboot
After that, the BIOS screen will be displayed, but if Windows pops up instead, reboot your computer and try again. Once you’re on the BIOS screen, repeat pressing F8, by doing so the Advanced Option shows up.

To navigate the Advanced Option use the arrow keys and select Safe Mode with Networking then hit
Windows will now load the SafeMode with Networking.
Press and hold both R key and Windows key.

If done correctly, the Windows Run Box will show up.
Type in the URL address, [product-url] in the Run dialog box and then tap Enter or click OK.
After that, it will download the program. Wait for the download to finish and then open the launcher to install the program.
Once the installation process is completed, run [product-code] to perform a full system scan.