How to remove native antivirus mcafee windows 8. Complete removal of Mcafee antivirus

Some programs and utilities are not completely removed from your computer even after the uninstallation procedure: they leave temporary files that are stored in different directories. To delete these files and clean up disk space, you will have to resort to several methods at once. This often happens with antiviruses: they store some data with settings on your computer in case you decide to install this software again. If you decide to change McAfee antivirus to a new one or accidentally downloaded it while installing other programs, follow the instructions below and you will definitely be able to remove McAfee completely.

How to Uninstall McAfee: Erase the Main Product

You can uninstall your main McAfee product in three ways: through special software for cleaning your computer, in the Windows uninstall menu, or through the uninstaller in the program folder. Depending on your situation and capabilities, different paths may be suitable for you.

How to remove McAfee using Windows

Go to the control panel through “Start” in Explorer.

Here you will see the “Programs” section, and under it the “Uninstall a program” subsection. Click on the subsection.

Find the McAfee Security product in the list and click on it. Click on the “Delete/Change” button at the top of the program.

The warning box is intended to remind you that removing a virus may compromise the security of your computer. If you still intend to uninstall McAfee, click “Uninstall.”

How to remove McAfee using a cleaning program

Many users have software installed on their computer that allows them to quickly uninstall programs, clear caches, and tidy up files. The example will be taken of the CCleaner program, which has all the listed properties.

Go to the program and find the “Tools” tab in the left menu of the program.

This tab contains all the programs, applications and utilities that you have installed on your computer. Find McAfee and click on the “Run Uninstaller” button at the top right of the screen.

Wait until the software is removed. This will take a couple of minutes, depending on the performance of your computer.

How to activate McAfee uninstaller in the root folder

By default, the program folder is located in this path:

Computer – Disk C – Program Files

If you did not change the path during installation, this is where the uninstaller will appear. Go to the program folder.

Double click on the “Uninstall” application.

You will see a warning window in which you need to click “Delete”.

How to remove leftover McAfee products

Any method you chose above has erased the main product on your computer. That is, now you do not have McAfee antivirus, web scanners and other programs, however, in many directories there are a lot of temporary files that clog up your registry, cache and other folders. To completely clean your computer from McAfee, try the algorithm below.

Developer McAfee offers another product called “Consumer Products Removal”. It is free and is designed to remove residue from any McAfee product. The program does not require installation, you just need to download and run it.

Go to the utility page https://service.mcafee.com and look for a link in the middle of the text to MCPR. Follow it and the download will start automatically.

MCPR will be in the downloaded files. To start the process, double-click on the utility.

Select “Agree” and click on the “Next” button.

You have to enter a simple captcha on the English keyboard. Click “Next” again.

Removing all related components will take about five minutes.

After the procedure is completed, you will see a window that reminds you that you need to restart your computer for the uninstallation to complete. Follow the advice and reboot your device.

Don't forget to uninstall the McAfee cleanup program on your computer in your downloads folder. Since it does not require installation, you can easily erase it by simply right-clicking and selecting “Delete”.
Be careful when installing various programs on your computer, as sometimes developers offer related software. For example, you may have downloaded McAfee by accident when you were updating Adobe Reader products on your computer: you simply forgot to uncheck the necessary checkbox on the Adobe website. Don't forget that you must have an antivirus installed on your computer if you uninstalled the previous one.

McAfee antivirus is a development of the company of the same name, which is a division of Intel Security. The product is paid, prices for users can be found on the official website. Unfortunately, the company distributes its product with the help of installers of other software, and free trial versions are not able to protect the device from serious threats. Therefore, users often wonder how to completely remove McAfee from Windows 10.

Manual cleaning

Many users install an antivirus due to inattention. The program saves its data in all “corners of the operating system” and getting rid of it is not so easy.

Programs and components

Before you begin uninstalling McAfee and all its components, try disabling Anti-Virus. If the tray icon does not have an exit button, proceed to remove it:

Go to Explorer - “Uninstall or change a program.”
Select McAfee LiveSafe and click Uninstall/Change.
Check the boxes under each item and click “Delete”.
Wait until the removal procedure is completed.
Restart your computer when the operation is complete.

Important! If you installed a package of applications from McAfee (for example, Internet Security, WebAdvisor) and the additional software was not removed when you uninstalled LiveSafe, clean it manually in Programs and Features.

Remaining files and folders

Check if files and folders remain after removing McAfee antivirus from Windows 10:

Removing drivers

Check to see if the drivers for this program are still in the system. Go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers and check for such files.

McAfee is antivirus software that is sometimes installed on laptops by the manufacturer. In principle, the program copes with its tasks well, but users still prefer to opt for other, more well-known utilities. However, there is one problem - removing McAfee can be difficult. But if you do not completely clear Windows of traces of the presence of this application, then another antivirus will not install correctly.

Removal procedure

First, disable all McAfee services. Right-click the antivirus shortcut and select its “Properties”.

On the General tab, click Startup Type and check Disabled.
Go to the "Recovery" tab. Check the “Do nothing” checkbox.
Restart Windows. All services are disabled, the application can be completely deleted.

Then you need to use standard Windows tools. Go to the control panel, submenu “Uninstall programs”. Find McAfee and click Uninstall.

If this method does not help, use special software.

Using the uninstaller

The McAfee antivirus removal utility can be downloaded from the program’s website. It's called McAfee Removal Tool. Before using it, the antivirus must be disabled.

Note: Some users report that the program works better in Windows Safe Mode, completely clearing the system of McAfee.

There is no difference whether you remove antivirus from your computer or from your laptop. Also, the steps listed above are the same for all versions of Windows.

In addition, instead of McAfee Removal Tool, you can use a more universal solution - Uninstall Tool. This powerful utility removes installed applications and then automatically searches for and destroys corresponding entries in the registry.
After removing the antivirus, take care of installing other security software. Use only licensed programs from reputable developers, without relying on the functionality of free utilities.

Not only does the mcafee antivirus penetrate our computers during almost every installation of any software product, but when removed, it manages to leave traces that interfere with the normal maintenance of Windows.

This overly intrusive guest behaves much worse than an uninvited Tatar. Therefore, the correct technology to completely remove mcafee from Windows 8 will be useful to all users.

Simply removing mcafee antivirus from Windows in the standard way - through the control panel - is usually not enough.

The program firmly bites into the system registry and makes changes in it that do not allow the installation of Kaspersky Anti-Virus - one of the most powerful and popular anti-virus packages among our users. You may not be able to remove antivirus from Windows for other reasons. For example, due to a failure during the uninstallation process.

Of course, this is not a reason to abandon standard tools. Be sure to try removing mcafee from Windows in the usual way. In some cases this works out, but in others it doesn’t – no one can guarantee this. But, if problems still arise during or after such an attempt, continue reading further.

We say goodbye to the program correctly

So, the McAfee shortcut has disappeared from the laptop desktop. The folders with the program on the disk are gone. But Kaspersky still won’t install and complains about the presence of a conflicting software product in the system. This is a sure sign that it was not possible to completely remove our “friend” from Windows. The program continues to live its life as a corpse and interfere with our lives. Let's see what can be done in this case.

To solve the problem, we will use a utility that is not included in the mcafee package, but is available on the company’s website. We are talking about a program called VSCleanupTool.exe. You need to download it to disk and run it (no need to install it). You will see a command line window, which will display the entire uninstallation progress of this malicious product. Each line running in the console window will correspond to the deletion of a file or registry key. When everything is finished, the program will prompt you to restart your computer. If everything is done correctly, you will be able to completely remove mcafee from Windows.

There is one thing that may confuse the user while following these instructions. A dozen shortcuts to unknown files suddenly appear on the Windows desktop. Don't worry - they will be removed immediately after uninstalling the antivirus package. There will be only one left - the mccleanup.log file - you can destroy it manually. As the extension of this file suggests, it is a log of the uninstallation that an experienced user may need to later analyze the progress of this process.

Often, software manufacturers offer to install other related products during installation. And it often happens that the user does not pay attention to such software, but only later notices it on the computer. One of such applications can be McAfee antivirus, and many users have a question about how to completely remove it from Windows 10.

McAfee is a very common antivirus. What is its use? The fact is that it is an extremely useful and simple program that can effectively protect your PC from threats. In addition, the software has good reviews. However, many users still do not need it for various reasons. For example, another licensed antivirus may already be installed on your computer. In this case, it becomes necessary to remove it, but deleting it using the standard method will not help in this case, since the software leaves its traces throughout the system, including in the registry.

Let us immediately clarify that there are several versions of the product - AntiVirus Plus, Internet Security, Total Protection and McAfee LiveSafe.

Uninstallation of any of these versions is carried out using similar methods on an OS of any bit size, be it x32 Bit or x64 Bit.

The surest way is to completely remove the antivirus and its accompanying data manually. The sequence of actions in this case can be imagined as follows:

We get rid of the antivirus itself. To do this, you need to go to the control panel. This can be done by clicking on the search icon located next to the Start menu and entering the appropriate query.

Go to the “Programs and Features” section in the control panel that opens.

Find McAfee Security Scan Plus or a similar name in the list of installed programs, click on it and click on the “Uninstall/Change” button. We do the same with the McAfee WebAdvisor program, if it is present in this list.

We activate both proposed items and click on the “Delete” button, and when the process is complete, reboot the PC. The program will be removed from the computer, but this will not end there.

We destroy residual files. To do this, you need to go to the partition on the hard drive on which the antivirus was installed. By default, all programs are installed on the system drive “C:” in the “Program Files” folder, so we are looking for McAfee here. The user should see two folders.

We delete them: select them, right-click, and then click on the “Delete” line.

But the procedure is not over yet. It is necessary to remove the drivers. To do this, you need to open the “Windows” folder on the system drive “C:”, and then go to the “System32” section and then to the “Drivers” folder.

We find and remove the following list of drivers using the standard method:

mfeapfk;
mfeavfk;
mfebopk;
mfeclnk;
mfehidk;
mferkdet;
mfewfpk.

If for some reason you are not sure that the driver you are removing is associated with McAfee, you can right-click on it and go to “Properties”.

In the “Digital Signatures” section, look at the name of the signatory. If McAfee appears in the name, the driver can be safely removed.

Having removed all of the above drivers, we move on to cleaning the registry. To open it, enter the key combination Win + R on the keyboard and enter the command “regedit”. Click "OK" or Enter.

In the registry editor that opens, press the combination Ctrl + F and enter McAfee in the search field, then click on “Find Next.”

We right-click on the found entry and click on “Delete”, then press F3 and continue deleting entries until they run out.

You can also clean the registry after uninstalling the antivirus using automated means, for example, CCleaner.

Just open this utility, go to the “Registry” item and click on “Search for problems”, and after completing the search, click on “Fix all”.

This completes the manual removal procedure. As you can see, this method is quite labor-intensive and requires a lot of time from the user. For those who do not want to uninstall components manually, a separate utility has been developed, which we will consider further.

Using MCPR

In the uninstaller window that opens, click on the “Next” button.

Activate the “Agree” item and click on “Next” again.

Enter the proposed captcha in the window provided for it and click on “Next” for the last time. The removal of all components will begin, after which all that remains is to restart the computer or laptop.

MCPR Removal Utility is the simplest tool suitable for any user. However, we will also look at the last, alternative method - using various third-party utilities.

We will use, but other similar programs can successfully cope with the task. Such solutions are good because they remove not only the antivirus itself, but also all residual files and data.

In this method, everything is as simple as possible:

Open the program (you can download it through the official website), find McAfee in the list provided, click on it and click on “Delete”.

We are waiting for the process of creating a restore point to complete, with which the system can be returned to working condition.

We remove the antivirus using a standard uninstaller, which will open automatically. To do this, activate both proposed items and click on “Delete”.

We are waiting for the process to complete.

After the removal is complete, select the advanced mode and click on “Scan”. The button will not be active until the antivirus is removed.

We are waiting for the scanning process to complete.

A list of registry entries related to McAfee will be generated. To clean the registry, click “Select all” and then “Delete”.

After deleting entries in the registry, the formation of a list of remaining files will automatically begin.

Click on “Select all” and “Delete” again. All associated residual files will be automatically deleted.

Some objects will remain, but the utility will immediately notify you that they will be deleted the next time you start the OS (in our case, only 8 files remain). Click “Finish”.

The antivirus product has been completely removed from the computer.

In some cases, the user is satisfied with the functioning of the antivirus, but wants to remove it because it has quarantined necessary files or is preventing a program from installing correctly. In such cases, it is not at all necessary to resort to extreme measures.

Restoring files from quarantine

If the necessary trusted files are quarantined, you can simply restore them. Let's figure out how this is done:

Open the antivirus, click on the settings icon and select “Quarantined items.”

Select the desired object, click on it and click on the “Restore” button. In our case, not a single file was quarantined.

Close the window and check the required file. It should now be available.

If the antivirus interferes with the installation of any software or, for example, a game, you can simply disable it for a certain time.

Shutdown

Let's figure out how to turn it off for a while. In this case, everything is quite simple:

There may be situations when the antivirus needs to be disabled for a longer period of time. To do this, you must use the instructions below.

Disable McAfee services

If you need to disable your antivirus, but don’t want to remove it, you can disable all services responsible for its operation. To do this, you need to carry out the following sequence of actions:

Press Win + R on the keyboard and enter the command “msconfig” in the window that opens. Click on Enter or “OK”.
Results
We have examined in as much detail as possible all the removal methods, as well as methods for temporarily disabling the defender. As you can see, there are quite a lot of options - from manual removal to using specialized utilities.
Antivirus is a complex program that cannot be removed using standard methods known to everyone. You should not immediately resort to the uninstallation procedure, because it qualitatively protects the computer from software threats of various types and effectively protects the user while using the Internet. A clear indication for removal will be a replacement for McAfee already installed on your computer - any other antivirus product.
Video instructions
For greater clarity, we attach detailed video instructions that explain the process of carrying out all the operations described above.