McAfee anti-virus software- How do I get rid of it?
Posted by: ErikL on 26 December 2003
A know-it-all friend of mine installed "McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 7.x" on my computer. I want to uninstall it and install AVG.
I did the Control Panel> Add/Remove Programs thing and rebooted. How do I get rid of the rest of what remains? If I do Accessories> Windows Explorer>...>Network Associates there are folders and files remaining. I try to delete and get "Cannot Delete Agent.Dll: Access is denied. The source file may be in use".
How do I rid of every single remnant of McAfee?
I did the Control Panel> Add/Remove Programs thing and rebooted. How do I get rid of the rest of what remains? If I do Accessories> Windows Explorer>...>Network Associates there are folders and files remaining. I try to delete and get "Cannot Delete Agent.Dll: Access is denied. The source file may be in use".
How do I rid of every single remnant of McAfee?
Windows 98 has a very useful program, msconfig, that Microsoft forgot to mention in the manual. I don't know whether it exists in later versions of Windows but there must be some equivalent. In Win98 you can type msconfig in start/run and then click the OK button to start it.
If you have msconfig then you could try this:
Either the quick way:
1) Run msconfig, select the "startup" tab and go through the list of programs, un-ticking any components of McAfee that are ticked. You will recognise them because their location will (I hope) be the folder in which McAfee was installed.
2) Save the changes and reboot.
3) You should now be able to remove the folder manually.
Or the way that I'd do it: [This might be more thorough or it might just illustrate how shallow and sketchy my knowledge of PCs is]
1) Reinstall McAfee with the same options as before - or failing that all options - and reboot.
2) Set any options McAfee has to not use program components - i.e. switch off anything like "scan on start-up" or "start with Windows" etc.
3) Reboot.
4) Run msconfig, select the "startup" tab and go through the list of programs, un-ticking any components of McAfee that are ticked. [There may be none ticked if McAfee allowed you to deselect all, in which case this step will have been unnecessary]. You will recognise them because their location will (I hope) be the folder in which McAfee was installed.
5) Save the changes and reboot.
6) Shut down McAfee (although by now it shouldn't be running) and uninstall it.
7) If anything has not been removed then you should now be able manually remove it.
There is no reason to assume that this will remove literally everything installed by McAfee - there may well be left over dlls or whatever in the Windows folder - but these should not be troublesome in any way...
Finally, I hope it works but don't blame me if it doesn't.
PS If you get the same error message as before then the chances are that you missed a program component in msconfig. In that case, you can make a note of everything that is checked, repeat the procedure with everything unchecked and restore the remaining checked components when you've finished. Unfortuntately, msconfig doesn't remove from its list items that no longer exist, which means you might get an error message on start-up after checking the now non-existant component but you'll therefore know what it is, allowing you to uncheck it again in msconfig if you want to avoid the error message.
Sorry: "ticked" = "checked" in the US.
[This message was edited by JeremyD on SATURDAY 27 December 2003 at 11:44.]
If you have msconfig then you could try this:
Either the quick way:
1) Run msconfig, select the "startup" tab and go through the list of programs, un-ticking any components of McAfee that are ticked. You will recognise them because their location will (I hope) be the folder in which McAfee was installed.
2) Save the changes and reboot.
3) You should now be able to remove the folder manually.
Or the way that I'd do it: [This might be more thorough or it might just illustrate how shallow and sketchy my knowledge of PCs is]
1) Reinstall McAfee with the same options as before - or failing that all options - and reboot.
2) Set any options McAfee has to not use program components - i.e. switch off anything like "scan on start-up" or "start with Windows" etc.
3) Reboot.
4) Run msconfig, select the "startup" tab and go through the list of programs, un-ticking any components of McAfee that are ticked. [There may be none ticked if McAfee allowed you to deselect all, in which case this step will have been unnecessary]. You will recognise them because their location will (I hope) be the folder in which McAfee was installed.
5) Save the changes and reboot.
6) Shut down McAfee (although by now it shouldn't be running) and uninstall it.
7) If anything has not been removed then you should now be able manually remove it.
There is no reason to assume that this will remove literally everything installed by McAfee - there may well be left over dlls or whatever in the Windows folder - but these should not be troublesome in any way...
Finally, I hope it works but don't blame me if it doesn't.
PS If you get the same error message as before then the chances are that you missed a program component in msconfig. In that case, you can make a note of everything that is checked, repeat the procedure with everything unchecked and restore the remaining checked components when you've finished. Unfortuntately, msconfig doesn't remove from its list items that no longer exist, which means you might get an error message on start-up after checking the now non-existant component but you'll therefore know what it is, allowing you to uncheck it again in msconfig if you want to avoid the error message.
Sorry: "ticked" = "checked" in the US.
[This message was edited by JeremyD on SATURDAY 27 December 2003 at 11:44.]