Automated Mcafee A/V uninstall

[JGliddon]

My company is switching to Norton A/V 7.6 Corp Edition. We currently are running Mcafee 4.5 company wide. Can anyone give me suggestions on the easiest way to uninstall Mcafee besides visiting every PC and going through control panel? This would be a real pain. Norton will do an autoinstall, but I want to get mcafee off first. Any hints would be appreciated. I would like to do something from the command line if possible.

 

[racer766]

You might want to research Microsoft Installer, it was used instead of Installshield for 4.5.x (at least for 4.5.1 that we rolled out a few months back) and has a command line interface.

http://www.swynk.com/friends/rice/switches.asp

This seems to be a good writeup of the switches...

Good luck!

 

[JGliddon]

I went to the link you provided. Using the Microsoft installer to uninstall Mcafee worked great. Thanks alot, it saved us a lot of time. We were able to unintall versions 4.5, 4.5.1, and 5.21 using this. We had to make an uninstall batch file for each version, but it still beat having to go through control panel... thanks again

 

[REHabers]

I have tried to follow the steps on the page that you referenced, but I receive the message "This installation package could not be opened." Any ideas on why I am receiving this? I am specifying the product code, instead of the package name. When I try to specify the package name I get the error "Incorrect parameters."

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[JGliddon]

Try this command, we were succesful using this:

c:\windows\system\msiexec.exe /qn+ /x &quot;\\<server name>\<your package file location>\vscan451.msi&quot;

This was the text of a batch file we kept on the server for our uninstallation of McAfee VS v4.5.1. I experienced the same &quot;incorrect parameter&quot; error when I put the switches behind the package file name. Here, we used two switches, the first, &quot;/qn+&quot;, to do a quite uninstall with a pop verification window when it was done. The &quot;/x&quot; switch tells it to uninstall. Since we did all of our installs via a server, I included the full UNC for the packager file in quotes.

I would say this very command worked for us 99% of the time, with the 1% exceptions being actual workstation problems with windows installer and the OS.

 

[mastermind76]

Why don't you just use ePO 2.5? This is actually the easiest and fastest way to uninstall McAfee - and it works. If you have problems removing fragments from your PCs, then use a tool calles MSI ZAP. This will remove all entries.

 

[Guest_imported]

I have previously had trouble with uninstalling McAfee 6.0 from my XP Pro PC, to install Norton. Afterward, every time I opened Control Panel, Norton gave me a msg: avsmcpa.dll not found. Finally, Microsoft told me to delete avsmcpa.cpl, and that got rid of the error msg.

I have a friend who attempted to install McAfee 6.0 on her Win ME system, and it hung in the middle, because it could not find 'VScan50.msi' to uninstall some 5.1 and 3.0 files. I downloaded this file from their German 'Baer' server, but the system would not accept it, because it was not part of a complete setup package.

I have not been able to contact McAfee, because their chat page was unreachable last Wed and Thur, and also just now. Once their server came back online, but nothing appeared but a black window (not a black widow!), with a generic image icon, and 'Error' at the bottom.

I see here some suggestions sent in for this problem with removing McAfee, which even its own setup program seems to have. Looks like a job for SQA tech!

Any particular suggestions for the problem of the deadly embrace while trying to install 6.0 on a WinME system, when it can't uninstall older versions of McAfee?

Thanks.

Uncle Bobbo

 

[REHabers]

Thanks for all of the help. I was able to create a package that checked for the existance of McAfee and if found it would be uninstalled. If it wasn't found then Norton would start the install process. There have been four out of 300 machines that had problems with the MSI utility. I downloaded the MSI cleanup wizard from Microsoft's site and was able to remove McAfee that way. Thanks again for your help.

 

[Guest_imported]

I want to delete the McAfee 4.5.1 However, when I run their auto-remove program. I said that the vsui50.dll is lost and cannot load the uninstall program.

Where can I reinstall the vsui50.dll file? or how can I delete McAfee from my PC? Thank you very much

 

[Guest_imported]

necesitaria avsmcpa.dll, como podria conseguirlo?

 

[Guest_imported]

COMO PODRIA CONSEGUIR AVSMCPA.DLL?NO ME DEJA INSTALLAR EL ANTIVIRUS MCAFEE A CAUSA DE UN ERROR EN EL MISMO.

 

[Guest_imported]

Where can i get the &quot;vscan50.msi&quot; in order to delete Mcafee Viruscan????
Thanks

 

[isepiq]

This sometimes is because a FULL install was not done, and that file is then 'missing'. I did a reinstall on one of my computers and made sure EVERYTHING was set to install, then rebooted and then did a full uninstall without the error message after that. Might work for you???

On other machines I have had to do the MANUAL uninstall which is listed in the FAQ's for this forum here, and is also listed on McAfee's site, but is a real bear to find, ugh.

McAfee live support can tell you where to find manual uninstall if you want that, or the manual uninstall link in the FAQ's here. Hope this is of some help?

IMHO
isepiq

 

[2IC]

Regarding the vsui50.dll message. I have included links below to the manual removal instructions of VirusScan 5.1 and VirusScan 3 below.

I hope they will help you remove the previous versions completely so you can continue your VirusScan 6 installation.

VirusScan 5.1

http://www.mcafeehelp.com/faq3.asp?docid=262

VirusScan 3

http://www.mcafeehelp.com/faq3.asp?docid=596

Also, regarding the removal of VirusScan 4.5.1 to resolve the vsui50.dll message; a user had that issue once and we found that the manual removal instructions for VirusScan version 5.0 helped remove the program. If after you install VirusScan 6, you still experience the same maessage, try to exclude the C:\Program Files\McAfee\McAfee VirusScan folder from being scanned by VirusScan by adding the folder to the exclusions tab.

VirusScan 5.0 removal

http://www.mcafeehelp.com/faq3.asp?docid=263

Hope it helps
-2IC