Removing McAfee VirusScan 7

[Ashak]

Hi guys,

I had a problem with my VirusScan control panel not loading and as a result can't run scans on demand. Everything else seems to be working in the background, updating automatically still and resident scanner still seems ok.

Went to the McAfee forums and was advised to un-install and re-install the program but the un-install process seems very complicated for a non-techie like me requiring manual registry deletions, custom installs, safe mode start-up and so on.

Why do McAfee and Norton make their products so hard to get rid of? I had similar problems removing Norton which came bundled with my pc. I wouldn't care but I had Kaspersky Pro originally before some networking solutions guy came and removed it from my system and insisted I should replace it with McAfee. I had to re-install Kaspersky once before and they sent me a registry cleaner and pretty easy to follow instructions which did the job. I

What I want to know is won't removing McAfee using Windows Add/Remove facility do the job well enough before re-installing? I appreciate the detailed advice given but as an ordinairy home user I don't expect to have to go through such a process to put right a product which is sold en masse. Are they just being ultra-cautious and covering their bases, or is this process absolutely necessary?

Regards
Ashak

[the Tester]

It's been well over a year since I uninstalled McAfee Virus Scan on my computer.
I was really new to computers and I had a hard time getting rid of McAfee.

Uninstalling with add/remove panel may leave traces of McAfee. Especially in the registry.That varies depending on the program that is being uninstalled.
Some programs are fairly clean when you uninstall them,others leave behind a lot of entries in the registry.

I remember Norton left some stray files that I had to hunt down after I used add/remove to uninstall it.

Unless someone with a recent experience drops in with an easy solution I would follow McAfee's instructions.

[bigc73542]

I have used mcafe 7 quit a few times and if you need to do an uninstall--reinstall, all you have to do is delete it with add-remove. Then just reinstall, it will overwrite every thing that was left and give you a new fresh install. I have done it at least ten times and it never fails (knock on wood). :). I have done this on 98se me and xp.

[controler]

Get registgry crawler and search for Mc Afee

[illukka]

another good choice would be jv powertools and the uninstaller there.. if you can still find the free version..

[Ashak]

Thanks for the advice guys, I decided to go with the instructions provided at McAfee forums although I didn't de-frag the disk after un-installing, I ran ckhdsk and cleaned out the registry (I think). I did a registry search and it didn't come up withj any McAfee files.

Anyway, the control panel is loading now but when I try to update the latest signature files I get an error message and Windows closes the operation down. My current files are 6 days old so that's not too bad but there is an update available which I can't download. I'm waiting to see if anybody at McAfee forums has any ideas what's wrong but thanks for your help in the meantime.