mcAfee stick-up

[omachine]

okay, here's my story. i had mcAfee installed via aol a few years ago. well i uninstalled aol back in january but forgot about mcAfee which, had expired the first of the year. i purchased trend anti-virus software but was unable to install it because i could not uninstall all of mcAfee. I removed every component I could find but the workstation refused to be uninstalled because it kept stating that mcAfee features were still on my laptop. i searched hi and low for these other features but haven't been able to locate them on my computer. meanwhile, i have not been online with my laptop since the first of the year and my roommate has made it clear that she will be giving me the boot regarding her desktop once her classes begin in the fall.

one of my friends suggested that i should save what i can to a flash drive and then wipe my computer completely clean, there by getting rid of mcAfee at last. i would then have to re-boot windows xp and load all my info from my flashdrive back onto my laptop. is this the best solution? i feel like mcafee has been holding my computer hostage all of these months. thanks for listening!

[TsPoet]

A) did you go into add/remove software? That should get it all.

B) try out Avast - the free version has worked for me for years. My only objection to it is the male voice that says "virus database has been updated" at oddly random times, scaring the heck out of me thinking there is a strange man in my house every time.

Good Luck.

[ny biker]

I had a similar problem. I had something called PC-illin (or something like that) from my brief attempt to get earthlink dsl to work, and I was not able to uninstall it no matter what I tried. But it was preventing me from installing McAfee, which comes free with my cable internet access. Finally I went to the website for the company that makes PC-illin and after poking around a bit I found a link to click to uninstall the software. They had different links depending on what version you were trying to uninstall, and I found one for mine even though it was several years old.

So go to the McAfee site and see if they have any uninstall help there. Also you can try calling their tech support - they might be reluctant to help since you're not a current customer, but maybe they could at least point you to the place on their website where you can get what you need.

Good luck!

[GLC1968]

My H works for McAfee and though he supports larger applications/corporate customers, I asked his advice anyway.

He suggested a visit to http://forums.mcafeehelp.com/

[TsPoet]

I got this from a friend who had the same trouble last year. Unfortunately he's a computer programmer, which means he doesn't speak English. but, maybe this will help.


I would suggest booting into safe mode, then removing it. Also I would run a utility called msconfig, by going to start->run and typing msconfig then enter. I would locate the mcAfee and uncheck it to run as a service and startup program, that usually does the trick.

[roadie gal]

There's a program called "CCleaner" that you can download for free. Mostly it's for getting rid of spyware and other stuff like that, but it has a great uninstall feature that gets rid of stuff that your control panel install/uninstall can't.

I'm so happy that I recently switched to Mac and don't have to worry about that stuff anymore.