uninstalling mcafee

i recently got a new desktop pc (acer predator orion 5000), and it came with mcafee pre-installed on it. i use norton 360 on all my other devices, and i've got it up and running on this new one. can i safely uninstall the mcafee without any unforseen consequences?

yes you can. use revo to uninstall it and scan for leftover registryentries/folders and delete them as well, then reboot. you can download the portable version of revo so no installation is necessary.

zen574 said:

i recently got a new desktop pc (acer predator orion 5000), and it came with mcafee pre-installed on it. i use norton 360 on all my other devices, and i've got it up and running on this new one. can i safely uninstall the mcafee without any unforseen consequences?

Click to expand...

You can.........BUT................Historically, McAfee has been notoriously difficult to uninstall.

I don't know if that is still true. At one time, there was an online tool designed specifically to uninstall it. Revo may have no problems with it. Have not checked.

I haven't had any personal experience with McAfee in at least 15 years.

revo works. if you want after the reboot, double check in %appdata% %localappdata% and %programdata% to make sure leftover folders are gone.

You uninstall McAfee the usual way, then you can use the MCPR tool from McAfee support if required.
Option 1 and 2 here:

That will result in Windows Defender clicking in and then install whatever AV you wish.
Ignore the McAfee claim that you are unprotected when uninstalling.

"Historically, McAfee has been notoriously difficult to uninstall."

Rubbish fake viral info, All my new Laptops have had McAfee pre-installed, no worries at all about uninstalling those. Indeed I used the whole of the free trial time to configure and evaluate McAfee before uninstalling.

thanks to all for the input. asked because mcafee is using about 466.2 MB of "memory" according to task manager vs. 275.2 from norton, and both are running at the same time. seems like a wasteful redundancy, right?

@zen574 ,

It is never a good idea to have two or more anti-virus programs running simultaneously. It wastes resources, causes system conflicts, and can actually compromise your protection.

Pick one or the other, or get rid of both and select a new product.

This AV Comparatives report can assist you: Consumer Summary Report 2024

I am now using ESET Smart Security Home Premium, but over the many years since 1988 I have used all of the products from the most popular products, including Norton, McAfee, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, etc.

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

One interesting item... I too inadvertently installed McAfee and had a heck of a time uninstalling it. Even after using MCPR I still had fragments of the software left on my system. I'd suggest you search your registry for "McAfee" where you will find several entries that you may want to delete. Please make sure you back up your registry before you do this as changing or removing registry entries can be detremental to your system.

One particularly pernicious fragment was a "startup" entry called SSScheduler which was in the McAfee directory which was removed as part of MCPR. The startup entry shows up in your Task manager as a "startup app". You can disable it (although it won't execute anyway as the actual file was deleted"). Unfortunately you cannot delete the entry in the task manager as there is no option to do that. The startup entry also shows up in CCleaner where you can also disable it, although upon reboot disabling it doesn't stick. You can choose to delete in in CCleaner, but you'll get an error stating it can't find the file. You can also find the entry in your Task Scheduler where you can delete it, although yet again it doesn't get removed from either your Task Manager or CCleaner. It took me a while to figure out how to get rid of this McAfee related SScheduler "Startup" entry. You can find it in Microsoft's "AutoRuns" utility. If you delete the entry in there it will finally disappear from your system everywhere.

I thought I'd document this in case someone else runs into this irritating entry.

No matter which method you use, you'll still find folders and registry keys related to McAfee. As long as it's uninstalled and not sapping resources, it's all good. The rest is OCD stuff.