Uninstalled McAfee and Windows 8 can't handle it

Uninstalled McAfee trial program from program list and Win8 reboots to
give password screen. Enter password and get a blank screen. Now what?

Any advice appreciated, short of throwing the laptop against the wall,
which is what I would like to do.
bj

chicagofan me7 privacy.net wrote:

Uninstalled McAfee trial program from program list and Win8
reboots to give password screen. Enter password and get a blank
screen. Now what?

Any advice appreciated, short of throwing the laptop against the
wall, which is what I would like to do.

Learn how to use Macrium Reflect to make browsable copies of your
C drive. It ushers in a whole new world of personal computing.

chicagofan wrote:
Uninstalled McAfee trial program from program list and Win8 reboots to
give password screen. Enter password and get a blank screen. Now what?

Any advice appreciated, short of throwing the laptop against the wall,
which is what I would like to do.
bj

McAfee has a cleanup tool (MCPR.exe), but the assumption seems to be
there is a working OS. And I don't know if this tool
would be smart enough to work with a system drive
slaved to another computer, for rescue purposes.
Just about every maintenance solution I can find,
assumes a working OS as a prerequisite (which is
absurd).

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS101331

It would be interesting to contact McAfee support, and
see what lame suggestions they have for this. If they
can't even "remote" into the machine, it would be pretty
hard to fix.

It almost sounds like a corrupted profile. Something
creating another account might fix. But being an AV
program that caused the damage, who really knows what
code or data got torched. It might only look like a
corrupted profile. Maybe even running CHKDSK from
recovery console would be enough to fix it ?

Would a System Restore point fix it ? Again, who
knows whether the hooks used, are fixed by
trying a System Restore point. You'd be looking
to do that from Recovery Console (your laptop
may have suggested burning that CD on the first
day you got the laptop - the prompt is
delivered by Microsoft). They don't mention
doing it from Safe Mode - the only issue with
doing it from Safe Mode, is a restore point restoration
cannot be undone, if you execute it from there.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html

******

While "booting in F8 Safe Mode" would normally
be considered an alternative, Windows 8 doesn't
exactly make that easy either. This isn't the
"normal" way to do it. The normal way involves
a whole bunch of dialog boxes, in a working Win8 OS.
Really, all of this mumbo-jumbo is just plain pathetic
compared to how easy it used to be.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tuto...-in-windows-8/

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html

And this option doesn't seem to be ideal either.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html

*******

And maintenance involving AV programs, calls for a
full backup before you begin. Especially on Windows 8,
where the escape options have been so carefully
thought out and designed. (Now what did I do with
that /sarcasm tag...)

In "working around" an AV product the other day, one
of the first things I did for my laptop, was back up
the entire drive. I'm not paranoid or anything...
But they are out to get you.

Good luck,
Paul

On 10/6/2013 3:14 PM, chicagofan wrote:
Uninstalled McAfee trial program from program list and Win8 reboots to
give password screen. Enter password and get a blank screen. Now what?

Any advice appreciated, short of throwing the laptop against the wall,
which is what I would like to do.
bj

Have you tried something simple, like trying to open Task Manager at the
blank screen? Ctrl Alt Del

Paul wrote:
chicagofan wrote:
Uninstalled McAfee trial program from program list and Win8 reboots
to give password screen. Enter password and get a blank screen. Now
what?

Any advice appreciated, short of throwing the laptop against the
wall, which is what I would like to do.
bj

McAfee has a cleanup tool (MCPR.exe), but the assumption seems to be
there is a working OS. And I don't know if this tool
would be smart enough to work with a system drive
slaved to another computer, for rescue purposes.
Just about every maintenance solution I can find,
assumes a working OS as a prerequisite (which is
absurd).

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS101331

It would be interesting to contact McAfee support, and
see what lame suggestions they have for this. If they
can't even "remote" into the machine, it would be pretty
hard to fix.

It almost sounds like a corrupted profile. Something
creating another account might fix. But being an AV
program that caused the damage, who really knows what
code or data got torched. It might only look like a
corrupted profile. Maybe even running CHKDSK from
recovery console would be enough to fix it ?

Would a System Restore point fix it ? Again, who
knows whether the hooks used, are fixed by
trying a System Restore point. You'd be looking
to do that from Recovery Console (your laptop
may have suggested burning that CD on the first
day you got the laptop - the prompt is
delivered by Microsoft). They don't mention
doing it from Safe Mode - the only issue with
doing it from Safe Mode, is a restore point restoration
cannot be undone, if you execute it from there.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html


******

While "booting in F8 Safe Mode" would normally
be considered an alternative, Windows 8 doesn't
exactly make that easy either. This isn't the
"normal" way to do it. The normal way involves
a whole bunch of dialog boxes, in a working Win8 OS.
Really, all of this mumbo-jumbo is just plain pathetic
compared to how easy it used to be.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tuto...-in-windows-8/

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html


http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html


And this option doesn't seem to be ideal either.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html

*******

And maintenance involving AV programs, calls for a
full backup before you begin. Especially on Windows 8,
where the escape options have been so carefully
thought out and designed. (Now what did I do with
that /sarcasm tag...)

In "working around" an AV product the other day, one
of the first things I did for my laptop, was back up
the entire drive. I'm not paranoid or anything...
But they are out to get you.

Good luck,
Paul

LOL! Thanks so much, Paul. I found some instructions at another site
[not MS] on how to safe boot with Win8, and right now I've had enough of
this frustration today. I found that McAgent was still in the Start Up
file, and disabled it, but getting past the black screen and that, is
all I can handle now. I wasted a lot of time on MS' great forum,
before I came back here.

Tomorrow I will read again all of your great info, and tackle it anew.
Thanks for your great response.
bj

Johnny wrote:
On 10/6/2013 3:14 PM, chicagofan wrote:
Uninstalled McAfee trial program from program list and Win8 reboots to
give password screen. Enter password and get a blank screen. Now what?

Any advice appreciated, short of throwing the laptop against the wall,
which is what I would like to do.
bj

Have you tried something simple, like trying to open Task Manager at
the blank screen? Ctrl Alt Del

No... but I did try the right click with no results. Don't know why I
didn't think of that, except that I get SO frustrated with this OS.
It's my daughters laptop, and I never see it until she wants something
corrected on it.

This time, she wanted Mc Afee [which she doesn't use] to stop giving her
that alert that her trial subscription had expired. The last time that
pc crashed Windows was installing updates, and that stupid McAfee alert
came up during the installs, with the same result we got today, just
trying to UNINSTALL IT. During the uninstall that stupid alert from
McAfee came up telling us our machine was unprotected. sigh

Anyway, I finally got it to safe boot, so maybe I can figure out where
things went wrong and fix it tomorrow.

Thank you for your suggestion. Hope I remember it next time... as I'm
sure there will be one.
bj

Ken1943 wrote:
Anyway, I finally got it to safe boot, so maybe I can figure out where
things went wrong and fix it tomorrow.

Thank you for your suggestion. Hope I remember it next time... as I'm
sure there will be one.
bj
Thought. Get their cleanup tool, put it on a usb stick and see if you can
run it from safe mode. Now I am glad I made a repair cd for my desktops.


KenW

Thanks, that's a good idea. In all that stuff I read elsewhere, I
remember that being mentioned, but hoped I wouldn't need it.
bj

I usually don't use the Windows uninstall.For the last few years I have
been using Revo Uninstaller Pro, but their free version does just as
well. I also have never used a freeware antivirus. This old timer
believes you get what you pay for. Just been lucky enough to have been
able to get lifetime licenses.


KenW

You may believe you get what you pay for, but it's not universally true.
For AV, some of the free ones are quite good, I will use MS Essentials
when my free trial of Trend Micro(which seems to be very good) runs out.

On 10/7/2013 6:04 PM, Dave wrote:

I usually don't use the Windows uninstall.For the last few years I have
been using Revo Uninstaller Pro, but their free version does just as
well. I also have never used a freeware antivirus. This old timer
believes you get what you pay for. Just been lucky enough to have been
able to get lifetime licenses.


KenW

You may believe you get what you pay for, but it's not universally true.
For AV, some of the free ones are quite good, I will use MS Essentials
when my free trial of Trend Micro(which seems to be very good) runs out.


I would recommend Avast instead of MS Essentials.

--
Alias

The only real problems are avarice, anger and stupidity.

Dave has written on 10/7/2013 12:04 PM:

I usually don't use the Windows uninstall.For the last few years I have
been using Revo Uninstaller Pro, but their free version does just as
well. I also have never used a freeware antivirus. This old timer
believes you get what you pay for. Just been lucky enough to have been
able to get lifetime licenses.


KenW

You may believe you get what you pay for, but it's not universally true.
For AV, some of the free ones are quite good, I will use MS Essentials
when my free trial of Trend Micro(which seems to be very good) runs out.


Perhaps you should read this about MSE:

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-security-essentials-provides-baseline-protection

On Mon, 7 Oct 2013 16:04:50 +0000 (UTC), "Dave" wrote in article ...

I usually don't use the Windows uninstall.For the last few years I have
been using Revo Uninstaller Pro, but their free version does just as
well. I also have never used a freeware antivirus. This old timer
believes you get what you pay for. Just been lucky enough to have been
able to get lifetime licenses.


KenW

You may believe you get what you pay for, but it's not universally true.
For AV, some of the free ones are quite good, I will use MS Essentials
when my free trial of Trend Micro(which seems to be very good) runs out.

You should read this article about MSE:
http://www.howtogeek.com/173291/good...rty-antivirus/

From what I've seen, MSE was never a particularly good solution. I've
had to clean far too many systems for friends and family that were
supposedly protected by up-to-date copies of MSE, and several repeat
cleanings.

On the other hand, I've never had to clean a system protected by Avast,
and after my previous experience with MSE began replacing MSE with
Avast on friends and family computers.

YMMV of course, but my recommendation would be to switch to Avast free
edition.

--
Zaphod

Vell, Zaphod's just zis guy, ya know? - Gag Halfrunt

On Mon, 7 Oct 2013 16:04:50 +0000 (UTC), Dave
wrote:


You may believe you get what you pay for, but it's not universally true.


Ditto!


For AV, some of the free ones are quite good, I will use MS Essentials
when my free trial of Trend Micro(which seems to be very good) runs out.


Yes, Microsoft Security Essentials is very good, and so are Avast and
Avira.

--
Ken Blake

On Mon, 07 Oct 2013 10:16:43 -0700, "Ken Blake" wrote in article ...

On Mon, 7 Oct 2013 16:04:50 +0000 (UTC), Dave
wrote:


You may believe you get what you pay for, but it's not universally true.


Ditto!


For AV, some of the free ones are quite good, I will use MS Essentials
when my free trial of Trend Micro(which seems to be very good) runs out.


Yes, Microsoft Security Essentials is very good,

You should read this article about MSE:
http://www.howtogeek.com/173291/good...rty-antivirus/

"In an interview with Dennis Protection Labs, Holly Stewart, the senior
program manager of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, said that
Microsoft Security Essentials was just a "baseline" that's designed to
"always be on the bottom" of antivirus tests. She said Microsoft sees
MSE as a first layer of protection and advises Windows users to use a
third-party antivirus instead."

--
Zaphod

Vell, Zaphod's just zis guy, ya know? - Gag Halfrunt

"Zaphod Beeblebrox" wrote in message
...


You should read this article about MSE:
http://www.howtogeek.com/173291/goodbye-microsoft-security-essentials-microsoft-now-recommends-you-use-a-third-party-antivirus/
snip

That's what the author claimed but not necessarily what MSFT stated (in
fact, no reference to using a third party by MSFT exists in that article or
even the article that howtogeek.com referenced (cf. Dennis Technology Labs
by pcpro.uk.com)...i.e. the statement in that article "Microsoft themselves
are recommending users not use MSE.." is the reporter's claim.

In fact the Dennis Technology Labs outfit is a testing firm affiliated with
PC Pro's (pcpro.com) publisher
- guess who -- Dennis Publishing Limited
Hardly unbiased reported Let's write an article then do the study to see if
we can publish it)

YMMV of course, but my recommendation would be to switch to Avast free
edition.

Checking AV test sites is one route...though even aVast (which is a good
alternative choice for free AV ) has a historically failure rate higher than
some others products.

http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archiv...d5 =11&id6=10

The bottom line...nothing performs 100% of the time. The user and habits
remains the most significant factor in what passes or fails.


-- --
....winston
msft mvp consumer apps

Ken1943 wrote:
On Mon, 7 Oct 2013 16:04:50 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:

I usually don't use the Windows uninstall.For the last few years I have
been using Revo Uninstaller Pro, but their free version does just as
well. I also have never used a freeware antivirus. This old timer
believes you get what you pay for. Just been lucky enough to have been
able to get lifetime licenses.


KenW
You may believe you get what you pay for, but it's not universally true.
For AV, some of the free ones are quite good, I will use MS Essentials
when my free trial of Trend Micro(which seems to be very good) runs out.
Wasn't there a situation where some of the free ones screwed with the OS
files if I remember correctly. Some of the paid ones also ? Agnitum
Outpost Security Suite never in the 10 +/- Years I've been using it on
four puters has never done anything "stupid". Then again, I watch where I
go on the net.

There was something on dslreports,I think last week about MS saying to
use something else than their security products. True/False ???


KenW


I missed that.

I've used Avast [free] for many years, and never had any problems
arising from it's use. Then again, I don't use any MS products where I
have a choice... other than the O/S. [And I so wish I had avoided
Windows 8 like the plague.]
bj