Deleting Norton antivirus and AOL

[shankle]

On a friends computer I tried deleting the Norton antivirus and AOL. Used the add/remove
and it left lots of both of them still on the machine. I then tried deleting by hand. The .dlls
would not delete. Got the access denied message.
I hate programs that are this invasive.

Any ideas?
JPS

[comrade]

Did you reboot?

[arafel]

On a friends computer I tried deleting the Norton antivirus and AOL.

So what did you expect? He got two application installed that simply reject each other - something that supposed to protect against malicious software and AOL. Hence the faulty condition.

But seriously..
Try re-installing. Then uninstalling again. And of course reboot, as comrade already mentioned.

[Vortex]

Instead of NAV, I would suggest you to use Antivir Personal.

[Jimg]

I recently went through this.  I had to run through CrapCleaner, manually edit the registry, search for every occurance of symantic and norton and delete them, run CrapCleaner again, reboot, repeat.

[Mark Jones]

Geez, that sounds an awful lot like the practice of removing malware...

[PBrennick]

If you think that is bad, try removing MSN Messenger.  I think it contaminates over half of the registry!  BTW:  For the removal of DLLs that resist removal, try Safe Mode.

Also, remember, people, before installing ANYTHING, set a restore point and you will not have these problems because you can always restore the machine to the previous condition with NO garbage in the registry.  We are our own worst enemies.

Paul

[hutch--]

I can think of one nightmare when setting up an older machine for a friend, I tried to install the ROXIO CD writng software in it and the install kept breaking but every time it dumped between hundreds and thousands of entries in the registry. The uninstall would not work to remove them either so I had to manually clean up the register. I would personally like to see the registry restricted to OS components only and all external software forced to managed their own INI file settings. At least you can find the damned thing and delete it.

[PBrennick]

Hutch,
A restore point would have prevented the nightmare.  But I do agree with you, the registry gets too much use, I have never cared for it. , seems like no one wants to use .ini files any more.  Not much, anyway.

Paul

[Mark Jones]

Paul, do many people use XP? It seems like a lot of people think XP is junk and are not using it. I can't count the number of times I've fixed things simply by reverting to a working restore point. :)

[PBrennick]

Thanks Mark,
I forget that not everyone has that luxury.  I guess I forget about the old windows versions.  Sorry about that, Hutch, senile decay is at work agaiin.  Still, the registry 'can' be backed up which would accomplish much the same thing.

Interesting Avatar, looks like you are taking over where Xor left off...

Paul

[Mark Jones]

Interesting Avatar

Thanks. Someone said to make your avatar interesting since you have to look at it a lot. Well... :bg

looks like you are taking over where Xor left off...

Naah! I think I've become too lazy to do half the things he done, especially at the end there... :eek

[PBrennick]

Mark,
I am only referring to his tastes in Avatars, nothing else.

Paul

[shankle]

Did the SAFE MODE thing and was able to delete most DLLS. HOWEVER, in Norton in
Common Files\Symantec shared I was leary of deleting most of those files because of
what else they might foul up. I guess the Norton company never heard of a nice clean remove.