Someone help me get McAfee OFF my computer!!!!!!!

GSDog

GSDog

GSDog

Soldato
Joined
12 Jun 2004
Posts
5,475
Location
Exeter
I just bought a new laptop that I got today, but unfortunetly it came installed with McAfee antivirus :rolleyes:
I right click on the icon and click "Exit", then go to Control Panel > Add/remove programs, click on Remove McAfee, and it says "VirusScan is running. Please close all running instances of this applications and retry uninstalling McAfee SecurityCenter products.

I swear some of these system hogging antiviruses are more hard work than viruses....

So any idea's how to get this peice of **** off my computer?
 
OK, think I have worked out a way to uninstall it.
I had to go into msconfig > startup, then untick everything to do with McAfee, so it wouldn't startup at all. Now it is letting me uninstall.

I can't believe how many processes McAfee had and how much stuff it used to start up.

My laptop had 80 processes the first time I turned it on!
 
I'd run a registry cleaner after uninstalling, such as the one found in TuneUp Utilities 2007.

Make sure you delete all files and folders relating to McAfee before running the cleaner.
 
Doesnt Mcafee have an unistaller listed in the Add/Remove list?.....

could have swore last time i used it, that it had an actual unistaller as well as the main application listed in Add/Remove, like ATI have with their drivers.

Havnt had problems removing it from the PC's here (all nod32'ed up now).
 
I strongly recommend you manually go through your hard disk and remove all mcafee files from c:\windows and c:\windows\system32 too.

If you try to upgrade to Vista, you may well get blue screens during the upgrade due to McAfee leaving its firewall executables on your hard disk. This is what happened to me and I was mystified until I found a post on the net recommending I deleted the firewall files. What was even more confusing was I had uninstalled McAfee months ago, yet the files were still on the HD! Grrrr.
 
t31os said:
Doesnt Mcafee have an unistaller listed in the Add/Remove list?.....

could have swore last time i used it, that it had an actual unistaller as well as the main application listed in Add/Remove, like ATI have with their drivers.

Havnt had problems removing it from the PC's here (all nod32'ed up now).
Click to expand...

Yes, that is what I was using. I only saw "McAfee Uninstaller" in Add/remove programs, didn't see anything else.
 
jamiemoles said:
I strongly recommend you manually go through your hard disk and remove all mcafee files from c:\windows and c:\windows\system32 too.

If you try to upgrade to Vista, you may well get blue screens during the upgrade due to McAfee leaving its firewall executables on your hard disk. This is what happened to me and I was mystified until I found a post on the net recommending I deleted the firewall files. What was even more confusing was I had uninstalled McAfee months ago, yet the files were still on the HD! Grrrr.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I will do, I have just done a disk defrag, deleted folders in Program Files, used CCleaner and cleaned LOADS of McAfee junk that it left behind and checked the registry.

I once installed NOD32 years ago on my family computer, 2 months ago I used CCleaner and it still had files on the computer...
 
Sorry to just jump in but I think I may have a simlar problem, bought a laptop with norton security pre-installed installed. Was going to ditch it, but will I have any problems getting it off my machine?
 
there are a whole bunch of Norton cleanup programs you can run after you uninstall it to remove all trace. just google it mate
 
I had a similar problem a while ago

Mcafee's add/remove uninstaller didn't work.
The uninstaller I downloaded off their website didn't work.
Disabling all startup entires/services from MSConfig didn't work.
3 different registry cleaning programs didn't work.
Manually removing any left over files/registry keys didn't work.

Eventually I had to format and start again because I couldn't install Active Virus Shield until Mcafee was removed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom