how to remove mcafee.com from windows XP system

Question

I have an Windows XP-32 system, running a (Cox-supplied) version of McAfee. That seems to work fine.

There is also for reasons I don't know (I inherited this computer) a version of McAfee.com here. It runs and burns cycles, and I'd like it to go away. It seems to be located in Program Files/McAfee.com, but I cannot delete any of the files in this directory including .dll files. I suspect some the dll files are held down by the execution of mcafee.exe (seen in the the windows task manager. There doesn't seem to be a "security tab" visible on properties of any of these files, so I cannot change owner or verify that I have rights to delete these.

Any suggestions on how to get rid of this?

Answer 1

Do a proper uninstall.

Open the Windows Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs. Find McAffe in the list, select it and press Remove.

This is the recommended method of removing any program from Windows. If you don't find it in this list, then you can try alternate methods of manual removal.

Answer 2

1. You have to uninstall via Add or Remove Programs.

2. Download MCPR.exe from: http://download.mcafee.com/products/licensed/cust_support_patches/MCPR.exe

3. Run MCRP.exe as Administrator.

4. If you get the message Cleaup Successful, then restart.

For really specific instructions, McAfee provides this answer in their FAQ too: http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507