hi there can someone help please? i have recently changed the anti-virus program on my misses laptop to AVG Free and installed Spyblaster. But the problem i am having is getting rid of the old programs. I unistalled them correctly but according to windows control panel they are still running! How do i get rid of them so AVG Free runs on it's own. As windows is telling me that more than 1 anti-virus & firewall are running and they may conflict with each other. The Firewalls are: McAfee Personal Firewall PCGuard Firewall Windows Firewall The Anti-Virus are: AVG 7.5.519 (recently installed by me) PCGuard Anti-Virus McAfee Virus Scan The Spyware are: McAfee Virus Scan PCGuard Anti-spyware Windows Defender When we bought this laptop about a year ago McAfee came free with 1 years cover, we didn't want to pay for it so when it ran out i unistalled it, we then used PC Guard for a while because it was free from our ISP, but decided to switch to AVG because it comes highly recommended.But now it still says all 3 are running at the same time!!! Have i missed something or is this normal? Any help appricated.... Thanks

Unfortunately simply uninstalling these products won't remove them completely and services continue to run in the background. Run the free Mcafee removal tool to completely remove the Mcafee products from your pc. Below are the Mcafee products the tool will remove and the operating systems you can use it on. Affected Suites: Total Protection Internet Security Suite PC Protection Plus VirusScan Plus Wireless Protection Affected Products: AntiSpyware Data Backup Personal Firewall Privacy Service QuickClean SecurityCenter SiteAdvisor Anti-Spam SpamKiller VirusScan Wireless Protection Affected Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Windows XP Windows Vista Click Me For Mcafee Removal Tool (MCPR.EXE) A very good free utility to remove unwanted programs and clean up broken uninstalls is Revo uninstaller. The link will take you to their webpage so you can read up on it. I have used this tool on my Vista machine and can verify it's compatibility Click Me To Go To Revo Uninstaller Home Page You are correct in regards to how many Antivirus and firewall programs to have running on your pc, there should only be one of each as they can conflict with each other and can cause system instability and slowdown. If you are going to run a third party firewall go to the control panel then into the security center and disable the windows one there rather than trying to remove it. Completely remove any other(s) you don't want though. A couple of free ones which are recommended regularly here are Zonealarm and Comodo firewalls. It is fine though to have as many Antispyware programs as you want on your pc.

http://www.computing.net/security/w...

i tried these but neither of them removed them. but the strange thing is that if i search through windows for mcafee or pc guard nothing comes up. strange. but in the security setting in vista it says they are still running!!!! is this just a vista bug? any-one else had this problem?

Heya Des A search won't find them if the files have hidden attributes (you need to show hidden files and folders in the folder options in control panel). An easier way to see if they are still running is to click on the start button (windows logo) at the bottom left, and type in "services.msc" (no quotes)where you can see the "start search" text on the bottom left. UAC will alert you click continue. Take a close look in the name and description columns to see if there are any unwanted services running. If there are you can choose to stop the service. Also have a look in "msconfig" (no quotes) the same way you get to services.msc and look under the startup tab to see if there are any unwanted start-up programs there too. One last thing you could try is to run hijackthis and getting it analysed to see all the running processes and kill them that way. To use HJT download to your desktop and when you run it right click and run as administrator. Select system scan and save a log file. Copy all of the contents of the logfile and paste it into the box at the bottom of the page at their website. Click analyze and it shouldn't take anymore then 2 minutes depending on your internet connection speed. Be certain that you make the correct selection(s) before using HJt to fix anything as the repair is done at the registry level. Click Me To Download Hijackthis from Trendsecure Click Me to go to Hijackthis.de for log analysis

You could use the Force Remove method. Go to my computer then C:\ then program files. Right click every folder with a name coresponding to those programs and click delete. Then empty your recycle bin and youll be fine. Once you delete this however youll have some registry errors. Go to www.uniblue.com and download the registry booster there. Chris Rae Tenace "Im 16 but I could be considered an IT Tech"