Make McAfee Go Away

How can I get rid of this pesky program? It won't uninstall itself, I mean. Clicking on its components in Add/Remove Programs is just ignored. Grrr!

If this is the wrong group, I apologize, but I don't see a McAfee group listed separately.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Dolgen
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If I were you, I'd blast away my Windows partition...just reformat & re-install Windows from scratch.

No. Seriously.

Even if you could get it to uninstall it'd still leave little turds all over your hard drive and in your registry. It's best if you just blasted everything away and never let McAfee touch your PC again.

Beware, if you move to Symantec, you may be "rewarded" by a similar experience.

Reply to
gray.wizard

Perhaps you are thinking more of "Norton", as opposed to "Symantec" (the latter is usually considered to be *much* more reliable)?

Reply to
Vrodok the Troll

The above is why I gave-up on *anything* "McAfee" way-back in 1996.

Reply to
Vrodok the Troll

I don't run McAfee so this is generic advice. Your best bet is to go to the McAfee site and find specific removal instructions and print them out before doing anything.

Anti-Virus programs in general don't permit you to uninstall them while they are running. sort of makes sense, doesn't it? Anyhow, open the McAfee program and find an option that prevents it from installing itself on next reboot. Then reboot and verify it isn't running. Now uninstall it.

But as I said above, best to go to the McAfee site and get proper instructions.

Reply to
Jim Higgins

Why should it be considered as more reliable in any way at all?

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

Norton is a child company of Symantec. Their products use the same underlying DLLs that poison a system. The only difference is the GUI which Norton bloats up to be pretty & dreadfully slow for home users.

I have seen Symantec's corporate anti-virus program's scanning engine rendered inoperable due to spyware. If the anti-virus protection is that fragile I don't want any part of it.

Reply to
gray.wizard

And on that note:

"Popular Programs Suffer Wave of Internet Attacks"

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Reply to
Vrodok the Troll

All interesting notes, but I didn't see anything responsive to the question. Is there no way to get rid of this pesky program? It came bundled with the computer, or I would never have had it in the first place.

I tried booting to safe mode and again attempting the Add/Remove stuff, but to no avail. I could search the registry and delete all references, also deleting the various folders, but I was hoping for something less drastic.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Dolgen

Bill,

This is primarily directed toward NAV, but many of the ideas are not AV-specific:

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Don Pelotas, among other KAV gurus, has a wealth of experience helping people get rid of AV installations, particularly OEM installations. If you want to post, you will have to register (it's free).

Ron :)

Reply to
Ron Lopshire

Bill, I know you were hoping for something less drastic & believe me when I tell you that if we had any other solution we'd be quick to tell you. However, unfortunately for you, McAfee only cares about getting their crapware on your computer. They don't have much interest in giving people a way to escape their personal brand of hell. The marginal uninstall routing is only there to keep people from screaming too loud and for tech support to tell people to perform if there's a problem upgrading to the next version of crapware.

Your only other option is to set aside a couple hours to scour through the registry removing every reference to McAfee that you find & then manually deleting the corresponding file off your hard drive. That's the only other course of action that can be performed when an uninstall routine fails you. It's a tiresome grueling process & it's really easy to miss something so there's no guarantee that when you're done you will have exterminated everything. That's why the recommendations for a re-format. It'll save you a lot of time, trouble, and head-ache in the long run. It wasn't just a snap recommendation to get you out of our hair & give you busy work to do.

I always recommend people who buy mass-marketed computers to re-format and install a fresh copy of Windows anyway. There is most likely other crap-ware lurking around on that hard drive that was bundled with your PC which you'd probably be better off without.

Reply to
gray.wizard

snipped-for-privacy@moria.mines and others wrote (no easy way out):

Ok, I exported the registry and deleted every single key I could find that referenced Mcafee in any way. Some keys marked Legacy(with add-ons) would not go away, and I had to boot to Safe Mode in order to delete the Mcafee folders on the C: drive, but it all appears to be gone now. I will let you know if a glitch happens in the next week or so.

I was under the distinct impression that Windows required all programs marked compatible with XP to have an uninstall option available. Not so?

Bill

Reply to
Bill Dolgen

Don't entirely blame McAfee. Odds are, there was corruption someplace that prevented the uninstaller from running. One fix might have been to re-install McAfee, then see if the uninstall worked.

Reply to
Andrew Rossmann

You are correct, but I guess McAfee took that to mean that it didn't have to be a *working* uninstall option.

However, like Andrew said, something may have gotten corrupted & that was what prevented the uninstall option from working.

I bet you're not willing to reinstall McAfee to test out that theory, though. ;)

Reply to
gray.wizard

It is called a windows application they are all the same.

Reply to
Charles

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check cookie

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remove mcafee reg entries

Errol

Reply to
defoam

Bill, try this: Run msconfig (Click Start > Run, type in msconfig and hit enter) and click on start up tab. Deselect any running tasks that have anything to do with McAfee. Click on Apply, OK, etc. Re-start machine. Go into Add/Remove and try ripping McAfee out again.

If that fails, go into the file system under Program Files, and delete the McAfee folder. Then run a registry cleaner program to take care of all the broken links, pieces, etc. System Mechanic works pretty well. There's others - check majorgeeks.com for freeware.

Download and install a free copy of AVG anti-virus so you don't get hit with anything unpleasant.

Good luck.

Pete

Reply to
Pete

"Pete" wrote

I am aware the besides AVG, there are two other well known free antivirus programs - Avast4 and Antivir. Based on various reviews I have read, I have formed the impression that Avast4 and Antivir are perhaps a touch better. I haven't used them yet.

Anyone has any experience with these two?

Regards - JW

Reply to
John Wright

Yeah it won't let you uninstall it while its running. To stop it running: A. comp management, services, stop all Mcafee services. B. task manager, kill the remaining McFoo programs.

Then run uninstall though Add/remove programs and it gets rid of it.

Reply to
E.

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