Over the past few years (now approaching a decade) I have been recommending that you get an anti-virus application and keep it up to date. Although I have sent out some deals through my free E-Mail newsletter, I have never personally recommended one of the various commercial anti-viral programs over another. A recent "bout" with one of them has me changing my tune just a bit.

    There have been times in the past where various readers have related stories about how installing one of the "big two" in the anti-virus trade has caused a problem including one reader stating that it crashed their entire operating system. Having anti-virus program "A" running or previously installed and then installing anti-virus program "B" can cause all sorts of difficulty. I can say that most of the complaints I hear concerning difficulty after installing a software application center around anti-virus programs.

    Until mid-2004, the only problem I had occurred years ago, before I had an anti-virus program and my computer became infected losing all the FRCN files. Sure, I had a backup (on tape!) and when I went to restore I found that the backup was also infected!

    I had been using McAfee Anti-Virus in various incarnations- most recently the "Virus Scan Professional 2004 Ver. 8.0." It seemed like a good deal at the time- a single-box version with license for two computers for $5 after rebate, but as it turned out, it was not the deal it appeared to be.

    My first mistake was in assuming that the "Professional" version would give the user more control over the program's various parameters, but as it turns out, it actually gave me less control than the previous 'standard' version I was updating. Well, we all know what happens when you "assume."

    The Pro version did operate, on a basic level- as with any good anti-virus application, it would automatically check for updates, and it would even dial my Internet connection and check for updates if I was offline at the time it was set to check for updates. Although the program had the "brains" to connect to the Internet, like a teenage girl in love, it didn't have the courtesy to hang up after a reasonable amount of time. Many times I would come in to find my unattended computer had been connected to the Internet for hours.

    I became disgusted with the lack of user control, so I searched and found an alternative to McAfee that I wanted to test, for your sake as well as mine. For an efficient and fair test I decided to un-install McAfee during this testing period. No problem, right? I shut down the McAfee program and went to the Windows "Add or Remove Programs" option in the Control panel. I found the McAfee entry, but when I tried to un-install the application I got the following message:

    I then went to the Windows task manager (CTRL+ALT+DELETE) to manually end all applications related to McAfee. I closed everything I thought had anything to do with McAfee including SpamKiller (now owned by McAfee). Still the same message when I wanted to uninstall. So I went back to Task manager and closed everything I possibly could. Still no luck. It would be nice if Windows displayed the "root" application of each of the running processes (where it was called from or by, but that's another story). I tried booting into Safe mode, but no luck there either.

    It was then I did a Google search on the Internet as well as in the newsgroups for "Uninstall McAffee Virus scan" and it was then I learned the awful truth- there is no way to un-install it- at least to say, no easy way.

    I finally got rid of it this way: I manually stopped as much of it as I could (as mentioned above), and then I started Regedit (the Registry editor in Windows, found by typing "regedit" in the "RUN" dialog box). I used Regedit's 'find' function to search for every entry of "McAfee" and I manually deleted each of them, one at a time. I didn't count, but I think that there were around fifty entries. I then rebooted and manually deleted all the remaining McAfee files on the hard drive and rechecked the Registry again. That worked. No McAfee on the hard drive and no McAfee running other than Spamkiller.

    So what have we learned here today?

    1) Do a Google search on programs before buying them, particularly antivirus applications. Read user reviews of the software as well. Search for things like "remove norton anti virus."

    2) NEVER purchase a McAfee or Norton anti-virus product

    3) Sometimes free isn't such a good deal.

    Now, you might be thinking, "I'm not worried. I use Norton!" My advice: Worry! All reports seem to state that removing Norton is even more difficult than removing McAfee. Now you can see why these applications are often pre-installed on a new computer. Once you got them, most people would find themselves stuck with them.