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How To Completely Remove McAfee Antivirus and Internet security

How to completely remove McAfee antivirus or it’s other consumer products like McAfee Internet security and firewall?

mcafee logo

Most of the newly purchased laptops might contain trial versions of McAfee antivirus preinstalled and it might therefore prevent other antivirus software from installing properly.You can easily remove mcafee antivirus from add/remove option in your windows control panel,but that might not work every time. Even after you remove McAfee antivirus,other antivirus softwares might say that you have Mcafee antivirus still installed on your system and first uninstall it.

To solve this problem,McAfee itself has a removal tool which completely uninstalls the following programs automatically.

  • McAfee Security Center
  • McAfee VirusScan
  • McAfee Personal Firewall Plus
  • McAfee Privacy Service
  • McAfee SpamKiller
  • McAfee Wireless Network Security
  • McAfee SiteAdvisor
  • McAfee Data Backup
  • McAfee Network Manager
  • McAfee Easy Network
  • McAfee AntiSpyware

How to Completely remove McAfee Antivirus

1)To completely uninstall McAfee antivirus,first you have to remove your McAfee product through Add/Remove Programs.To do this,

Click Start, Settings, Control Panel.

Double-click Add or Remove Programs.

Select the McAfee SecurityCenter product.

2)Download the McAfee Consumer products remover tool [mcpr.exe]

Close all open windows to prevent any problems.

Double Click MCPR.exe (software which you just downloaded) to run the removal tool. [Windows Vista users must run this tool using administrator privileges for that,right click mcpr.exe and choose Run as Administrator option]

Mcafee-removal-tool

3)You will receive a Cleanup successful message after sometime.

4)Restart your system.

If the McAfee removal tool doesn’t work and you got a Cleanup Unsuccessfull message,then click view logs and save them for additional reference.

mcafee-failed-cleanup

If you have any problems regarding the uninstall of McAfee antivirus or if the McAfee removal tool doesn’t work,say them in comments.

Download McAfee Consumer product remover [mcpr.exe] [594 k]

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Edward Stream August 6, 2009, 9:12 am

    wow. thanks. i needed the tutorial how to completely remove it. now i can finally install bitdefender internet security 2009 and be sure that i won't have any security issues any more

  • Anonymous August 6, 2009, 8:04 pm

    How do I completely remove McAfee antivirus without having to format the hard drive?
    I have removed it almost a dozen times and every component associated with it (through the control panel.) I have windows xp.

  • Anonymous August 16, 2009, 11:23 am

    clean up failed cleanup is already running error message occurs and view log option is not available

  • Anne Honym January 18, 2010, 11:52 am

    Hello,
    I am professional IT.
    "Clean up failed", cleanup is already running error too, since i launched pcpr.exe 2 times by mistake.
    Even after deleting C:Documents and SettingsuserLocal SettingsTempMCPR.tmp folder, rebooting and trying again.
    Kapersky is still deteting my ancestral installation of mcafee. Avasts suck, it is the second time it detects false positives (I spend an entire night going crazy with it), i cannot stand Norton products anymore since many year's because of multiple heavyness (installs/desinstalls sucks, dramaticaly slowdown computers, unsuccessful product upgrades, and moooore), Symantec Endpoint Protection is too slow at the computer startup so i have the windows red shield for a while, saying my computer is vulnerable.. I go back to F-secure Client Security.

  • Anonymous February 5, 2010, 10:45 pm

    I found "McAfee Clean Up" in the Sheduler.
    Sorry I have a german OperatinSystem.
    You find the Sheduler in Start / Programs / Accesoirs (Zubehör) / Systemprograms
    There is a Job sheduled.
    Klick on this job and choose "start now".
    Then the McAfee CleanUp which is allready started executes the cleanup.
    You can control it in the log file "mccleanup.log" which is located at "C:Dokumente und EinstellungenUsernameLokale EinstellungenTemp"

  • Anonymous May 29, 2010, 2:29 pm

    THANK YOU Anonymous // 2/05/2010 2:45 PM.
    Removing the Scheduled Task Mcafee entry from Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Scheduled Tasks – did the trick. Now the Mcafee Removal Tool runs to completion without errors or failure.

  • Anonymous August 5, 2010, 9:15 pm

    Thank Mr. German Anonymous. Fixed my problem, too.

  • MIKE November 11, 2010, 4:22 pm

    The bottom line is that it doesn't matter how you got this virus what you need now is to get rid of it immediately. If you have an Antivirus installed it's probably not effective against this virus, like most other antivirus software.

  • Anonymous December 27, 2010, 11:04 am

    many thanks my german friends, I solved the problem