Symantec hangs on uninstall

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#1

I know this program is notorious for being difficult to uninstall, but this is just ridiculous. Add/Remove just creates an endless uninstall that never actually finishes. I cannot manually delete the folders because they are somehow in use, though I don’t know what program is using them. What can I do to just get rid of it?

Side note: I did try to uninstall this before, and for all intents and purposes it seemed to work, though I never really searched for it’s presence afterward. Now I see it’s really all there, except I can’t start it or update it. I just don’t know what to do with this shit.

#2

Haha. Norton.
Go into the start menu, and type in msconfig. (Or run msconfig)

Click the Startup tab, for simplicity un-check EVERYTHING, otherwise find everything by Symantec.
Another thing you can try is going into the services tab and look for anything by Symantec, un-check them.
Restart your computer and attempt the un-installation again. If this fails again, then try to delete the folders.

If this succeeds, download CCleaner and clear out the registry entries.
If it fails, I’m sure someone else will have a solution for your problems by the time I check back. ;]

#3

You should have never installed it :wink:

#4

What happened to Symantec? I remember when their shit was the best around but then, suddenly, avoiding it was the best course of action. Did they turn retarded overnight or something?

#5

What happend was at the symantec HQ:

“What everyone has dual cores now? OMG we must use ALL of them ALL the time so that we can not really do much except look like were doing something”

also

“People dont want to uninstall norton antivirus, because its on every PC World advert, so we DONT need an uninstaller, DUH”

thats what happened

#6

Somehow this morning I had the Symantec Security Scan crapware installed, it kept popping up asking to scan and then 3 times during the uninstall it asked me to register/purchase other products.

I have anti-virus that works, thanks.

#7

I used about 20 different ones before finally realizing that common sense is the only anti-virus that actually helped

#8

Oh, that is true. Most of the time it is disabled, but just having it installed gives my parents peace of mind.

#9

I have Avast! Free installed. It does its job well, I barely notice it and has next to no performance impact.

#10

Avira installed here. Works like a charm, IMO best free antivirus around.

BTW do what Zageron said, just be sure to uncheck both norton services and startup entries in msconfig, not just one or the other.

#11

I use to have Trend Micro, and I was in love with it…but sadly, the support for it went away :frowning:

But yeah, to join a better network here at Stony Brook, I sorta NEED to have Symantec for some crazy reason

#12

Surprised no one has mentioned this yet.

Symantec’s software digs in SO deep, they actually provide a dedicated “Symantec Removal Tool” on their web site. Add/Remove programs can rarely get everything (and in the case of Symantec, even software like Revo can have issues).

Let’s just say you have NIS2009 (Norton Internet Security) - Google “NIS 2009 removal tool” - hope that helps.

#13

^ they only made that because of class action lawsuit due to users being unable to remove Norton antivirus.

Also +1 common the common sense antivirus. I haven’t and an antivirus on my PC for years. I just install MS security essentials on computer that I service now as it doesn’t have all the fucking false positives like AVG does and also doesn’t bring the computer to a crawl like most of the other stuff.

#14

+malwarebytes anti-malware (download the free version)

doesn’t run in the background, it’s only for scanning and removing. and it works perfectly.

#15

Common sense is all right and good, but how do you know you don’t have a virus unless you have something to detect it. For instance if you had a key logging virus, with no other ill effects, you’d never know!

#16

that’s why i said +. security essentials/AVG for scanning, and antimalware for cleaning(at least that’s how i do it)

#17

I’d know just because I know every item in the taskmanager, every folder in program files and every service enabled on startup.

Also I’m running windows 7 SP1, I doubt anyone can find a backdoor into an OS from the future. :3

Common sense + virustotal.com = pure win

#18

Norton is absolute crap. In all honesty though, Symantec’s business class products aren’t completely bad. Symantec Endpoint Protection is pretty good, at least on XP. When my company switched one of our clients over to Windows 7 machines though, things got kinda wonky. Somehow the very management client - not even the scanning or threat protection modules - has the ability to slow file transfer speeds to a crawl. Symantec’s still working on it. So yeah, not a whole lot of love for Symantec, but they aren’t the worst company we have to deal with.

Anyways, I use Avast free at home, and I’ve used AVG free before as well. Both are pretty good at what they do, but like it’s been said before, common sense is the best antivirus. As much as I dislike having to clean up after phishing errors and such, at least it gets me hours to bill. Lol. Oh and Malwarebytes is very good for cleaning up existing infections, though for bad ones it may break the system. Best antivirus remover is a format and reinstall. If an infection looks bad enough I always skip straight to reinstalling Windows. Faster and easier.

#19

Sorry Jerry wasn’t really aimed at you, just in general. I used to trust AVG but it crapped out on me once, and I ended up spending 2 days virus cleaning. I’m not really a norton hater, but then I’ve had no real trouble with it.

#20

I’ve had real trouble when people want me to make their computer faster but refuse to let me uninstall or disable norton.

remove spyware that norton doesn’t notice = gain 3 seconds boot time
remove norton = gain 10 seconds boot time

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