or however the hell its spelt. is it a pain in the arse to get rid of? new laptop came with a 60 day trial pre installed, obviously I want to get rid of that as soon as it runs out. My question is, does it go kicking and screaming like norton tends to, or is it easy to remove?

It goes kicking and screaming alright. You'll need to find a force-removal tool.

You can use McAfee Consumer Product Removal tool from their website. Of course, there's always doubts, you can also try using CCleaner or another registry cleaner to remove the ones from McAfee.

 

 

 

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=107083&lc=4105

I have always been able to uninstall it just stop all mcafee proccesses.

If you haven't got rid of it by the time I get to work on Monday, I will post a removal tool for you.

 

 

 

There is another solution, but you may not be too happy at doing it.

 

 

 

1. Boot into Safe Mode.

 

2. Click Start, and type REGEDIT into the run box and press enter.

 

3. Press F3 and type McAffee into the search box and press enter, this will search for McAffee in the registry.

 

4. Delete all occurrences of Mcaffee you find, each time you delete one, press F3 again and it will automatically find the next occurrence.

 

5. Reboot the PC.

 

6. Navigate to this folder C:\Program Files and delete any McAffee folders you find.

 

 

 

Please note that I hold no responsibility for you accidentally deleting important registry keys that can kill your windows, if you just remove McAffee then you should be fine. If you're a bit inexperienced with the registry, I would create a system restore point before doing anything with it.

If you haven't got rid of it by the time I get to work on Monday, I will post a removal tool for you.

 

 

 

There is another solution, but you may not be too happy at doing it.

 

 

 

1. Boot into Safe Mode.

 

2. Click Start, and type REGEDIT into the run box and press enter.

 

3. Press F3 and type McAffee into the search box and press enter, this will search for McAffee in the registry.

 

4. Delete all occurrences of Mcaffee you find, each time you delete one, press F3 again and it will automatically find the next occurrence.

 

5. Reboot the PC.

 

6. Navigate to this folder C:\Program Files and delete any McAffee folders you find.

 

 

 

Please note that I hold no responsibility for you accidentally deleting important registry keys that can kill your windows, if you just remove McAffee then you should be fine. If you're a bit inexperienced with the registry, I would create a system restore point before doing anything with it.

 

 

 

I'd set a system restore point regardless, mistakes do happen, and those mistakes might be costly.

I am no expert or tech wiz...but I have had a similar problem before, which I was able to resolve. My PC also came with a free trial of Mcafee...I deleted it the normal way, through add/remove programs. However, I'm using Vista...and in the Windows Security Center it still said I had it installed. Apparently it was a problem with some process in Services, but basically its through that, that I resolved it. So basically...I would suggest just deleting it the normal way, and if your using XP or Vista...see if you have that same occurrence with the Security Center. But again I am no expert or tech wiz...just speaking as someone who's been there, done that.

of course I'll try add / removing and using the official removal tool, and hopefully the world will be nice to me. I'm not going to do this until the trial is up, because I havent decided which AV/Firewall/anti spyware I'll use. Currently I'm thinking AVG, Zonealarm and Spybot.

Don't go for AVG, it once was a very good antivirus, but now it has gone downhill, meaning it doesn't find viruses as it did before. It's still better than McAfee, but if you want a free antivirus, go for Avira. That Av has some false positives, but is worth it, being the best free antivirus right now. Just to say, I have removed viruses on some friend's computers and they all had AVG. One of the computers had a rogue antivirus that was shutting AVG down too, and quite easily. If you want to go on even better, but having to pay, Kaspersky and NOD32 are the best. I'm personnally going to change from Kaspersky to NOD32 when the subscription ends.

 

 

 

For antispyware and firewall, you made good choices ;).

I will agree with sbrideau on that one. I've been using Avira Antivir on my desktop now as a replacement for Norton and it's been great. It's even found things Norton didn't pick up, and it uses hardly any system resources. I'm curious to know how good the premium (pay) version is though.

If you haven't got rid of it by the time I get to work on Monday, I will post a removal tool for you.

 

 

 

There is another solution, but you may not be too happy at doing it.

 

 

 

1. Boot into Safe Mode.

 

2. Click Start, and type REGEDIT into the run box and press enter.

 

3. Press F3 and type McAffee into the search box and press enter, this will search for McAffee in the registry.

 

4. Delete all occurrences of Mcaffee you find, each time you delete one, press F3 again and it will automatically find the next occurrence.

 

5. Reboot the PC.

 

6. Navigate to this folder C:\Program Files and delete any McAffee folders you find.

 

 

 

Please note that I hold no responsibility for you accidentally deleting important registry keys that can kill your windows, if you just remove McAffee then you should be fine. If you're a bit inexperienced with the registry, I would create a system restore point before doing anything with it.

 

 

 

I'd set a system restore point regardless, mistakes do happen, and those mistakes might be costly.

 

You could it wouldn't hurt but everybit of information i have gotten from clare has always been good.