|
Believe me - it's a nightmare but it can be done. The only way I have personally found how to uninstall McAfee when it is corrupt and will nether install or uninstall in the normal way. Without wiping the whole operating system and starting all over again is: maually deleting all the files and actual program from the harddrive. All references and modules in the Windows Registry, that done - running a Registry cleaner to eradicate any anomalies left behind (redundant entries etc) in the Registry. Editing any enties in win.ini, system.ini, autoexec.bat and only then I found I was able to re-install the program. When I finished re-installing - I immediately uninstalled the whole lot - never to put it on a PC again. I use Norton's now as it doesn't appear to 'clog up' or slow the system down like McAfee did.
These are drastic measures - and you really have to know what you are doing if you are going to tamper with the Registry, suffice to say that the Registry should be backed up before proceding - just in case anything goes wrong (you can always put it back to the way it was). The Registry is composed of more than one file - I took a copy of system.dat, system.ini, win.ini, user dat - all in C:\windows\, also the root system files autoexec.bat and config.sys (some of these files are hidden so I used a DOS program called Norton Commander - it reveals all the hidden files).
Having backed up the mentioned files I went about the task - started Windows and ran 'regedit' to clean out the Registry - I just searched for any text relating to McAfee, and deleted the entry or sometimes whole module.
If I did leave any remnants behind - it didn't matter as these would be overwritten again when I reinstalled McAfee. But this exersize allowed me to install again. If anything had gone wrong - then it would have been a simple case of starting up the PC in DOS and copying the backed up files to their appropriate folders and rebooting back into Windows with my replaced Registry and root files albeit back to where I started.
As I said it worked for me - and if anyone knows of a better way I would certainly be interested.
The bit about backing up Windows Registry in DOS by the way is a handy tip. If you find that your PC won't boot up into Windows - in otherwords you cannot even get to the Desktop. You can replace your Registry (if you have a backup copy of the files I mentioned) using a startup disk etc etc.
|