McAfee is crapware!
When I got my laptop 1 1/2 years ago, it came with an oem version of McAfee, which I installed (hey, it was free) and have been using it until today. It recently started acting funny and this morning it was telling me that a dll file in ATITool had a trojan in it. Now I haven't even used the ATITool program in several months so there is no way it could have gotten infected that I know of. So I decided I would remove McAfee and install AVG instead. I also hated that dreadful security center interface that it uses, which basically is just a spam ad for the rest of their crappy products like their firewall and malware scanners.
So I go to uninstall the damn thing and first of all, there's no uninstall feature in the McAfee folder. So I go to add/remove programs and try to uninstall the security center entry there and it won't run; says something about uninstalling McAfee Antivirus first before uninstalling the security center. But, there is no uninstall feature anywheres for just the antivirus feature.
So I go to their site and start looking around and finally find some info on how to remove this crap program off my computer. I had to boot in safe mode and delete a specific dll out of the McAfee.com folder, then run the uninstall for the securitycenter. I then rebooted normally and lo and behold, an info box pops up when booting to the desktop saying that deleted dll file couldn't be found. I then went in and there was still a bunch of leftover crap left in the McAfee.com folder, so I manually deleted as much as I could (evidently some files were still in use), then rebooted in safe mode again. I then went into registry and deleted the entries to the 2 dll files I couldn't previously delete, then went and deleted the rest of the McAfee.com folder. When I rebooted normally after this, all was finally gone, thank God. I was then able to install AVG with no problems and I'm running fine now. I still had 2 entries showing up in a HJT scan though, both dealing with McAfee as a service. So I opened up services and saw the 2 services and disabled them and now there is no mention of McAfee in the HJT log (hooorahhh).
I just think it's pitifull that a large company like McAfee can put out such a sorry piece of crap like this antivirus product. A person shouldn't have to jump through hoops just to get rid of an unwanted program, but they sure made it hard to get rid of.
BTW, I let AVG do a complete scan after installing and updating the definitions and my laptop showed clean.
So I go to uninstall the damn thing and first of all, there's no uninstall feature in the McAfee folder. So I go to add/remove programs and try to uninstall the security center entry there and it won't run; says something about uninstalling McAfee Antivirus first before uninstalling the security center. But, there is no uninstall feature anywheres for just the antivirus feature.
So I go to their site and start looking around and finally find some info on how to remove this crap program off my computer. I had to boot in safe mode and delete a specific dll out of the McAfee.com folder, then run the uninstall for the securitycenter. I then rebooted normally and lo and behold, an info box pops up when booting to the desktop saying that deleted dll file couldn't be found. I then went in and there was still a bunch of leftover crap left in the McAfee.com folder, so I manually deleted as much as I could (evidently some files were still in use), then rebooted in safe mode again. I then went into registry and deleted the entries to the 2 dll files I couldn't previously delete, then went and deleted the rest of the McAfee.com folder. When I rebooted normally after this, all was finally gone, thank God. I was then able to install AVG with no problems and I'm running fine now. I still had 2 entries showing up in a HJT scan though, both dealing with McAfee as a service. So I opened up services and saw the 2 services and disabled them and now there is no mention of McAfee in the HJT log (hooorahhh).I just think it's pitifull that a large company like McAfee can put out such a sorry piece of crap like this antivirus product. A person shouldn't have to jump through hoops just to get rid of an unwanted program, but they sure made it hard to get rid of.
BTW, I let AVG do a complete scan after installing and updating the definitions and my laptop showed clean.
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Freeware:
registry cleaning: RegCleaner
AV: AVG
Anti-Malware: SpywareBlaster, Ad-Aware, SpyBot
McAfee - I insist that people uninstall it. It blows.
RBF, I tried the PC-Cillin out a few years ago and it was OK, but didn't impress me as being way superior to what I had been using. Then I had something happen to the hard drive it was installed on and when I put a new hard drive in that box, I installed something else (I think NAV2003).
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