Norton/Symantec=evil

[Paintbait]

Well I was fixing a family member's computer the other day, an old dell that had no right(nor the proper cabability)of running windows XP, Dell=evil is another story for another day however.

She's not terribly Computer savvy, and a lot of folks who are equally if not less technologically incapable...Not to ramble she had a number of awefully bad AV programs on her computer, I got rid of most of them accept the Norton and Symantec stuff which would not Uninstall. I couldn't even, while I admit this to be a last resort and extremely sloppy, delete the folders due to write-protection on DLLs.

While I'm sure the liscense on the norton and symantec stuff is expired and I put AVG 7.0 on there as well as ad-aware pro and SP-2(though I didn't get around to the updates on the OS). I would sooner reformat the drive and start from scratch, but anyone who is up on Symantec and/or Norton offer any advice on removing such programs should I encounter them in the future?

I ramble, I know.
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[pam123]

Yeah it's a mess.
Symantec has a special uninstaller on their site for getting rid of their stuff.
If you're doing it by hand you'll have to do it in safe mode and you'll also need a registry cleaner.
I use this one : http://www.worldstart.com/weekly-dow...cleaner4.3.htm

[jimmyrules712]

when i cant uninstall norton i just disable it form running through msconfig

go to start - run - type in msconfig hit enter

then in both the services and startup page uncheck anything that says norton or symnatec or looks related. hit apply and reboot.

[Force Flow]

If you search the symantec knowledge base, they have manual uninstall instructions for specfic symantec products on the specific O/S they were installed on.

[Paintbait]

Thanks guys. That really broaden's my understanding of it all.

Paintbait