Mcafee programed to destroy hard drive if you dare try to uninstall??

After hearing about the security probs with Mcafee and reading good reviews about AVG and Zonealarm I decided to get rid fo Mcafee and install those programs. WELL, uninstalling Mcafee is not for the weak of heart. It took me about 7 hours and numerous chats with live tech support at the Mcafee site. Why would they make a product that you need to go into your registry and remove each file individually to remove. Add/remove is a joke with this product.
Even when you think you've got it all you restart and there are the warning msgs about not being protected and better reinstall right now.

I finally seemed to get it all, installed my new protection products and went to bed (4am, what fun). Got up the next day and I couldn't get online and nothing would work, but the warning msgs were back. Spent most of the day with dell tech support and online chat support from Mcafee (on my laptop, which runs bitdefender and webroot). No one could get my computer to work. I finally had to reinstall the operating system, and the first thing I did was delete Mcafee from every folder and registry I could find. My computer is working fine now, after hours of reinstalling everything.

Mcafee is worse than any spyware of virus i have ever gotten, an it nearly killed my computer. I think they do this on purpose, its much easier to keep it than go through what I did.

In the same vein, a few years ago I had a computer and tried to uninstall NOrton. My computer got so messed up that I couldn't even reinstall the operating system and I had to buy a new computer.

Mcafee and Norton, great programs!!! For now, when I buy another computer I will insist that neither one is installed or insist that they uninstall it (and I will check all the registrys) before I leave the store.

Well, that was some vent, anyone else have these problems?

 

Well, you do mention 2 of the most problematic programs when it comes to requested help here, but I have no idea what McAfee could possibly gain by destroying hard drives upon uninstall. Norton provides tools to aid in removal of their products; can't comment on anything by McAfee, have no desire to try it.

McAfee must have hired ex-AOL techs if it took them 7 hours of help to get their product removed.

btw, if you think Norton and McAfee products are a pain to remove, do yourself a favor and stay away from ZoneAlarm.

 

You know what I totally agree with you. I've had macafee before but not for a while. So I decided to go back to them because when I did have them they worked well and I still had the warm fuzzies from that experience. But when I came back I was surprised and how much of a pain it was to get updates for my antivir and firewall. Whenever I tried to check for updates to my macafee software it would send me to the macafee website. But that site is a maze with no exit if you ask me. So I would have to wait untill there software decided to dload the updats automaticly. Contrast this with what it used to be. I used to be able to manually check for updates and if it found them they would be dloaded to my computer. Definately not worth the trouble. When my subscription to macafee expires in a month I am going to follow the recomendation of majorgeeks and try the freeware antivir and firewalls they suggested.

 

Just an addition to my last post. Did I mention that they make you pay for tech support for a product you already bought from them.

 

I use McAfee on one of our computers and it works very well.

You need to update when their servers aren't overloaded is what I think-- and then it is very quick, less than a minute from start to finish. I also liked the old manual update procedure but I got used to the new way and it works well-- I just don't let it update automatically.

After rebates, the software was almost free. I think I paid sales tax for it.

I haven't had any bad experiences uninstalling any of the antivirus programs. I hope I don't either.

I use ZoneAlarm on another computer and it works very well. I will probably continue to use it.

I use avast with Vista Beta 2 and I am really happy with it.