Disabling/uninstalling McAfee...

kickahakickaha
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
My great-aunt apparently got conned into installing McAfee anti-virus on her 10.4 iMac G4 by her previous ISP, and now it's seemingly causing all sorts of issues.



Since I haven't ever installed it, gotten near it, or so much as touched a copy of McAfee, anybody have any advice for me to pass along to her? Specifics on how to get rid of it, or at the very least turn it the &*$%($# off would be great. At the very least, I need to tell her how to make it stop scanning every Safari download as it comes in. Turns out she hasn't been able to download *anything* through Safari in about three months because of this, and I just found out. It gets most of the way (or completes) through the download, then says 'Checking...' and freezes solid. She has to three-finger salute the damned thing.



I had her check to see if it had a System Preferences pane (no), or there was anything that looked like McAfee in /Applications or /Applications/Utilities (no).



Sorry I can't be more helpful here, she's 86, does pretty darned well with her Mac, but is across the country and calling me for her last desperate plea for help.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    We can assume it is either Virex or the McAfee itself. For Virex, http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301291



    For McAfee Virus Scan, I found this:



    http://download.nai.com/products/nai...rc2/Readme.rtf



    Supposedly there is an uninstaller in the package, or on the CD.



    What a mess. Searching for OS X on the McAfee site brings up nothing but Windows results.



    There should be an actual app somewhere on her drive that is the control panel for the software.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    That's what I thought too, but she was completely unable to find anything with the name McAfee anywhere. \



    Thanks, will see what we can dig up on her machine with that info. And yeah, McAfee's website was *STUNNINGLY* unhelpful.
  • Reply 3 of 3
    rob05aurob05au Posts: 348member
    Use the uninstaller in the dmg which mcafee comes and then goto



    Home/Library/Preferences and remove any for there



    Also check



    HD/Library/Preferences as there may or may not be something there.



    The uninstaller leaves the prefs behind for some unknow reason it is also good to do a spotlight check for anything showing under macafee, virusscan.



    8)
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