How To Remove The Java Deployment Toolkit From Firefox

The Java Console extension is not the only add-on that Java adds to the Firefox web browser. Users who open the Plugins tab of the Firefox Add-ons menu (by opening Tools > Add-ons) will notice at least one Java Deployment Toolkit plugin there. There is no way to uninstall or remove the plugins directly from within Firefox.

Plugins are automatically picked up by Firefox as outlined in the How To Stop Automatic Plugin Installations In Firefox. This basically means that the plugin will be added to the web browser if the installation puts it into a directory or location that Firefox scans during startup to find plugins.

java deployment toolkit

Removing the Java Deployment Toolkit

Lets begin with a description of what the Java Deployment Toolkit does:

The Java Deployment Toolkit takes the guess work out of determining what versions of the Java Platform end users have installed on their PCs. It supplies Java based web applet/application deployers with a simple JavaScript interface. This greatly increases the ease of detections of users’ Java environment, as well as the ease of Java Platform deployment.

A plugin that not many Firefox users are likely to need.

We start the removal process by entering about:config in the Firefox address bar. Filter for the term plugin.expose_full_path and set it to true. This will display the full path of each plugin in the about:plugins window that we open afterwards. Double-click the entry to set it to true.

about config

Now open about:plugins the same way. The screen lists the filenames of all plugins that are installed in the Firefox web browser, in this case it is npdeployJava1.dll linked to the Java Deployment Toolkit 6.0.200.2 and npdeploytk.dll linked to the Java Deployment Toolkit 6.0.190.4.

java deployment toolkit

The Java Deployment Toolkit files are located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\npdeployJava1.dll and C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\new_plugin\npdeploytk.dll. Users of 32-bit editions of Windows need to remove the (x86) part of the url so that they end up with C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\npdeployJava1.dll and C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\new_plugin\npdeploytk.dll.

It is now time to close the Firefox web browser and open the plugin locations in Windows Explorer. The plugins can simply be deleted in their folders which will also remove them from running as plugins in the Firefox web browser. Cautious users might want to back up the files first before they remove or delete them from the directories.
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