dombanks Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 is there a program that will remove traces of old antivirus software from a PC? my laptop can take an age to restart sometimes. just sits there and does chuff all. when it eventually does come back to life it is usually followed by an Ad-Aware thing popping up on the bottom of the screen. i know norton does a removal tool but wondered if there was a cover all that would get rid of old software that is lingering from stuff being installed/removed over the years Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 CCleaner. Do a run cleaner then a registry scan/fix issues then Tools - Startup and stop all the things starting that you don't need. The only thing that starts on my PCs is antivirus/firewall. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterg Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 CCleaner as above but I'd also use Revo Uninstaller to make sure you've found everything Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Almost mentioned that too Peter but it only works on installed programs - so if you've uninstalled it then Revo won't find it. I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rory's Dad Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Almost mentioned that too Peter but it only works on installed programs - so if you've uninstalled it then Revo won't find it. I think. I've got something in my workshop that does that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhutch Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 Mahaha, Norton Strikes again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Frankland (T3OMF) Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 Get all your data off and rebuild it 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dombanks Posted January 31, 2014 Author Share Posted January 31, 2014 Get all your data off and rebuild it yeah i guess.... too much hassle tho and the only discs i have are the acer discs that put it back to how it was new rather than a total re install of windows. CCleaner has done a great job. i think the main problem was i didn't realise i had Microsoft security essentials running as well as another antivirus so after i stopped this and let CCleaner do its stuff all is well (ish) again Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Colonial Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 Mahaha, Norton Strikes again! Oooo, don't get me started on Norton. It brassed me off so badly that I uninstalled it, and it then made my Outlook so unstable it wouldn't even open in Safe Mode. Uninstalled Outllok and reinstalled it again - same thing. Tried everything including CCleaner, Revo, you name it, I tried it, nothing. Only sorted when I upgraded from Office 2007 to Office 2010 and it asked me if I wanted to install the Norton add-on that was lurking in the background and had not uninstalled. That's just one of many Norton horror stories I could tell you. Tried McAfee once - and on install, it deleted every single email I had saved - all 1,500 of them. I went ballistic and got a refund. Nowadays running Avast, which has been great, no issues at all (touch wood). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 Think that's bad Scott, once installing an AV package to an Exchange server at a clients, (one we'd used many times before and had been excellent). We got a panic'd message from one of the secretaries the next day to say she couldn't find her emails. We trooped back up to Leeds, by which time the rest of the office had arrived. Every single email older than a week had gone! The AV product had gone through the database and archived everything older than a week. Except it hadn't. It had failed to write to the archive. Everything was gone... Talk about working in a hostile environment, you could feel the "daggers" people were staring at you with! It eased a little bit when we showed them the screengrabs off the server showing the archive function was set to be disabled in the configuration. (Small sigh of relief from us at that point). It took us two, very stressful days for us to rebuild the Exchange database from backups and restore everything. Turned out to be a bug in what had been the latest software release of the AV product. Don't think our client ever did get the compensation they were suing them for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Colonial Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 Strangely feel better now Dave, thanks - although I feel bad for you as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 I don't mind admitting I had a "moment" when I sat down at the server and realised what had happened, (but not why). Felt absolutely sick, the thought that something we'd done may have just "killed" a small company and cost a dozen jobs, if we couldn't recover the MDB. It's something of a relief to find it isn't your fault. But not much, not when you've got half a dozen office staff round you fighting back the tears and an owner who looked as sick as I'd felt. (They were international import and distribution of clothing, so everything from orders to designs was done via email). A big DB too, given their insistance on leaving design work as attachments and using Outlook as a filing system, despite our previous advice to the contrary. The main database was about 24 Gig IIRC. Slllloooooowwwww to work with and very unwieldy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s2rrr Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 We had an IT upgrade once which needed a larger server to be installed as the original was running out of space, woops lost the lot, unfortunately no one did a back up and about 6 months of work was lost from several hundred people. Took dozens of extra people a couple of months to restore what was lost. When you are talking about the whole topsides of an oil production platform its a big deal. Lesson learned until the next time. One of my kids for some reason installed a Norton Antivirus in addition to the standard Microsoft one I have on the house computer. That took some uninstalling as Norton seemed to just fight off all attempts to uninstall it. Not sure how ( possibly if) I did remove it but it no longer features in my programs where it was. My eldest son is a PC guru and thankfully I didn't need him to sort it but it was bl**dy close as I got to the point where it kept going round in circles, do you want to uninstall - yes- not playing etc. That particular one has gone now and I do use Norton on the other laptops hence no 2 daughter thought she was doing the right thing. Probably my fault for having 3 machines with Norton on and one with something else, got a 3 pc Norton package at the moment. Computers are a pain in the ar*e when they go wrong. Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 31, 2014 Share Posted January 31, 2014 So true Bob, so true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dhutch Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 ...using Outlook as a filing system....Cant beat it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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