Question about reinstalling Mcafee

RoachycaL · 17 Feb 2012 at 22:30

I take PC repair jobs here and there for extra cash when I can mostly from advertising in my local area. I've done it loads of times before but I haven't touched a Mcafee product before!

Anyway I've been given a laptop which is running incredibly slowly. It's about 4 years old and it's running Windows Vista. I thought no brainer - I'll back up her favorites, documents, music etc. and reinstall the programs that she wants back on there.

Only problem is that she has Mcafee installed and she said she got it when she signed up with her bank (I think it was HSBC).

I made a full clone of the hard drive using Acronis as I usually do, in case I muck something up or lose anything but now I'm reading on the net that if I want to reinstall Mcafee - I should have connected the laptop to the internet and uninstalled it on the old installation first. Something to do with deactivating the license on their end?

What's the best option here guys? Do I restore the image using Acronis, uninstall Mcafee then reinstall Windows again or should I get her to contact her bank? She seemed confused when I mentioned that she should have an account with Mcafee, where she renews subscriptions etc.

RoachycaL · 18 Feb 2012 at 01:09

Not really helpful if she doesn't want to do that! I agree that Mcafee is a load of horse **** but some people are stuck in their ways unfortunately.

I have also read a few reports now that MSE is pretty crap at detecting malicious activity - even though it is small and light weight.

http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-p...sentials-bombs-on-first-2011-av-test-2011055/

RoachycaL · 18 Feb 2012 at 10:24

Ok thanks for the advice guys. The only issue I have - and I've had this issue myself is that I used to use MSE and it turned out to be no good. I recently reinstalled Eset Nod32 and it found a lot of stuff that MSE didn't.

Quite frankly that worries me especially if I'm putting it on a pc where the user doesn't know what she's doing.

Would it be safer if I stuck MSE and Malware Bytes on there too - but set Malware bytes so that it does a scheduled scan?

Any need for a software firewall either? I think it was the beefed up version of Mcafee.

RoachycaL · 18 Feb 2012 at 15:13

I'll stick MSE on there and tell her why I've done it. If she really wants to put Mcafee back on, I'll tell her that it will slow her machine down.

At least she has the choice of reinstalling it again herself. Thanks to Jordan for the confirmation on that one!

I really wish I had made a slipstream Vista disk. It's been installing hundreds and hundreds of updates this morning - then two service packs. Unbelievable.