In trying to repair a Windows laptop which was acting really slow and appeared to be riddled with problems, I discovered it was running Norton / Symantec Anti-Virus.
Ugh.
It’s been shown with benchmarks that this software kills PC performance. And, in other tests, AVG, which costs less, catches more, without being a resource hog.
So, I go to uninstall Symantec, which can be a chore unto itself. But this time I was greeted with a new source of irritation.
I got a dialog box which said “Please enter the uninstall password”. Great. Just great.
So, given that this OEM laptop had paid support by Dell, I figured I’d ask.
The answer I got back was “I wasn’t aware there was a password to uninstall.”
While Dell was dodging the support question, I found this very helpful article:
In it, it said change the value of this registry key, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\INTEL\LANDesk\VirusProtect6\CurrentVersion\Administrator Only\Security\, from 1 to 0 with RegEdit.
I tried it. It worked. No problems. Problem solved.
So, I tell the Dell Support person the point is moot, I got past it, and shared the link with him so that future customers with the same problem could have the problem solved. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Learn something, and share — that way others don’t waste time down the path you traveled?
Dell’s tone instantly changed, they didn’t seem happy I got past it. And, then he tells me that Dell support doesn’t give passwords, or tell how to override them, even for OEM installed stuff; they would not be sharing the information, no matter how useful.
So, did they know about the password and just feed me a line? I was certainly left with that impression.
Incidentally, I’ve been told by an IT person, the next time I encounter the password box, enter: symantec
You’ve got to be kidding me.