Can't change address bar search in IE6

Hi,
Been going crazy trying to change IE6 address bar search back to Google. Used to be as easy as "Search/Customize/Choose search provider for address bar". Now, no matter what I do, I can't change the address bar search engine. Went to Microsoft and they didn't even address this issue. Only told you how to use Search Customization which doesn't work anymore. Been to many other sites that suggested to edit the registry so I did that but it didn't change the address bar search. I downloaded google.zip from this forum but it didn't work. Only changed the sidebar search which I can do with the customization feature but I can't customize the address bar. Now I am stuck with "Live Search" which I hate. Never had a problem before. Did not install anything recently. Actually I recently did a full destructive restore to clean the system. I also just did a spybot, adaware, and Avast! scan but all came up clean.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

 

Thanks for your reply plodr. I checked my firewall (Comodo) and saw nothing there. It's the only security program I installed recently. A real pain this is.

 

Thanks Halo for your response. I disabled Spybot in the IE add ons. I didn't install "tea timer" (or what ever that real time Spybot thing is called) so that's not running. I disabled both the spybot addons in IE and also disabled the Spyware Guard addon and rebooted but it still searches with Windows Live. I never set it to Live Search. Always was set to Google. Possibly installing Windows Live Mail Desktop reset it. But I have always been able to set it back to Google or Yahoo until now.

 

I have the same problem and I can't associate it with any changes I have made. I had Comodo and McAfee Antivirus/AntiSpyware installed before this happened. I installed Ad-Aware, Spybot and Windows Defender AFTER it happened and ran scans with all of them. McAfee and Defender didn't find anything - Spybot and Ad-Aware found and cleaned 3 and 4 incidences respectively. Whatever, I can change the sidebar search but I can't change the address bar search from Windows Live. Curiously, the registry says the the search page is Google!

 

Yup. Same thing with me. I can change the side search but not the address bar. And also, in my registry it also says google is the search engine. I think there were 4 or 5 edits I was instructed to do on some website dealing with the problem but they didn't fix it. Neither did the google.reg fix. All that was changed was the sidebar search to google. (I previously had that set to Yahoo). Real pain. Hope someone has the answer to this. I have since changed browsers. I'm using Firefox now. With a few tweaks, it can be a nice replacement to IE
All the best to you

 

I couldn't have worded that complaint about trying to change IE6 address bar search engine away from Live search back to Google better myself. I too hate Live search and have tried numerous attempts and online help desk searchs to no avail! It's like they don't want you to be able to change to a competitor's search engine or something.

 

I found a simlply way to set address bar search engine:

http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/Tips/Tip.aspx?id=6672

its working for me