Uninstalling Norton AV; Is there a HOWTO ?

[Al Dykes]

I'm faced with the task of freshening up a bunch of donated well-used
Win/98 machines, with no budget. This will involve running spybot,
uninstalling lots of crap, applying MS patches, installing Firefox,
and geting AV running.

The machines have random expired versions of Norton, mostly. The one
time I tried to uninstall Norton, about 4 years ago it was a real
mess.

Is there a URL for thetricks and issues for uninstaling various
AV packages ?


Thanks

 

[Ionizer]

I'm faced with the task of freshening up a bunch of donated well-used
Win/98 machines, with no budget. This will involve running spybot,
uninstalling lots of crap, applying MS patches, installing Firefox,
and geting AV running.

The machines have random expired versions of Norton, mostly. The one
time I tried to uninstall Norton, about 4 years ago it was a real
mess.

Is there a URL for thetricks and issues for uninstaling various
AV packages ?

Removing Norton AntiVirus 2003 or earlier by using the Rnav2003.exe:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/docid/2001092114452606

" Only use Rnav2003.exe when you cannot uninstall Norton AntiVirus 2003 or
earlier through Windows Add/Remove Programs."

 

[Vanguardx]

I'm faced with the task of freshening up a bunch of donated well-used
Win/98 machines, with no budget. This will involve running spybot,
uninstalling lots of crap, applying MS patches, installing Firefox,
and geting AV running.

The machines have random expired versions of Norton, mostly. The one
time I tried to uninstall Norton, about 4 years ago it was a real
mess.

Is there a URL for thetricks and issues for uninstaling various
AV packages ?


Thanks

Maybe I missed the part that you said these donated machines actually
included a legal copy of Windows (and all the other software left on
them). If Windows was truly included with these donated machines then
just reformat the partition and do a fresh install of Windows. That
will take a lot less time than trying to spend 2 hours of hunting down
and cleaning up the registry and file system after uninstalling NAV or
NIS (even after using their RNAV and RNIS utilities) along with any
other software that you really did not get a legal copy of. If you get
stuck with removing spyware and fix the consequences of its removal then
definitely it will take much shorter time and effor to just wipe and
install.

 

[Al Dykes]

Maybe I missed the part that you said these donated machines actually
included a legal copy of Windows (and all the other software left on
them). If Windows was truly included with these donated machines then
just reformat the partition and do a fresh install of Windows. That
will take a lot less time than trying to spend 2 hours of hunting down

These machines are donated, like most Windows and Office, without
CDs. We have a strict policy of not stealing software, and some
nutty deadlines, and I'm working on machines as I can. There will not
be any fresh installations for a while. If a hard didk dies we will
put another donated machine in it's place and put the dead PC on a
pile, for later.


Patching and getting an updated AV is a major step forward for these folks.

I'm also installing OpenOffice on the machines that don't have Office.