Tag: Uninstall

Uninstalling Intego Software

I’d rather eat an orange then brush my teeth with peppermint toothpaste than deal with cleaning up my system after using Intego’s software. If anything can bring the Windows reboot experience, coupled with the leaving of software cruft, to the Mac platform, this software does it in my opinion. Here’s how I finally got rid of it all. I hope.

I recently purchased a Mac bundle with software and it included software from Intego, consisting of the Personal Antispam and Personal Backup applications. I installed them, and from that point forward it was an experience I’ve regretted and have been trying to undo. Only now do I think I’ve made some progress toward that goal.

Frankly, I didn’t get what the backup software did for me over many of the free solutions out there, and while the personal antispam look intriguing, it was intrusive as well and I decided to fall back to Apple’s spam filter included in Mail.

Even if a product doesn’t make it into my main line of recommendations, I often will keep it around in the event I suddenly have use for it. This, for example, is how TypeIt4Me eventually won me over.

Intego went out of their way to annoy me straight from the start. How so? Every time I went to install a package from them, they felt the need to do what appeared to be a gratuitous reboot. It was like being on frickin’ Windows. And they had to install their own update manager, which had to take a glory spot in the menu bar. And it had to do updates, which required even more reboots. I was done with them at that point, but don’t even get me started on the subscription scheme that rode on top of the atrocity.

So I wrote to them asking them how to uninstall their software. Here’s the reply I got:

Proper removal of the software package requires using the Installer package located in your software bundle or disc. If you have manually attempted to remove the software, you will need to first, reinstall the software again, then use the same Installer package to properly remove the applications.

If you need to, you can re-download the installer for Internet Security Barrier X6 using the link below:

http://www.integodownload.com/en/isbx6.html

Open the installer and select to uninstall all software. Restart your computer.

Great, another reboot. Lucky for me, I hadn’t tried to go off on my own path, plus I had the original installation utility. I tried it, and it appeared to work.

Notice I said appeared?

One week later, LittleSnitch pops up and reports my system is spontaneously trying to access Intego’s update service for the very set of applications that, for all evidence I could tell, I removed and forgot about. Apparently, no so.

LittleSnitch also reveals it’s TaskManagerDaemon who’s trying to deal with Intego’s NetUpdate buried in /Library/Intego. Thank you LittleSnitch, curse you Intego.

Intego leaves cruft. Running cruft. Seems this isn’t new of them, according to Apple archives.

Part of the Mac culture is being a good citizen. In my opinion, I feel they aren’t.

After uninstalling the software in exactly the manner they prescribe, enter this this command at your terminal:
sudo find / -name Intego -print

I suspect you’ll develop a similar facial tick as it starts returning output after scanning your disk.

Go grab a root shell, you’re gonna wanna also wipe out:

  • /Library/Intego and everything below it.
  • /Library/Application Support/Intego and everything below it.
  • /Library/Preferences/Intego and everything below it.
  • /Users/wls/Library/Application Support/Intego and everything below it.

Oh, and you’ll want to Reboot as well.

…it’s not like I had other applications up or was doing anything important.

After the reboot, you’ll notice tons of console messages from launchd. Now you need to do this.
$ launchctl
launchd% remove com.intego.task.manager.notifier
launchd% remove com.intego.netupdate.agent
launchd% exit

And, you’ll need to remove some .plist files:
$ sudo rm -v /Library/LaunchAgents/*intego*
$ sudo rm -v /Library/LaunchDaemons/*intego*

And preferences, frameworks, keychains, and widgets:
$ sudo rm -vrf /Library/PreferencePanes/NetUpdate.prefPane
$ sudo rm -vrf /Library/Frameworks/IntegoiCalFramework.framework/
$ sudo rm -v /Library/Keychains/Intego.keychain
$ sudo rm -vrf /Library/Widgets/Intego\ Status.wdgt/

Reboot again.

UPDATE (12-Dec-2010): I’ve been in contact with Intego Support, support@intego.com, and they were kind enough to provide this extra information:

If there is anything left on your computer, you can remove it manually.

Can you please go into the following areas on the computer and delete any traces of Intego or VirusBarrier:

/Macintosh HD/Library/Intego
/Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchAgents
/Macintosh HD/Applications
/Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences
/Macintosh HD/Library/Logs
/Macintosh HD/Library/Receipts
/Macintosh HD/Library/Startupitems
/Macintosh HD/Library/Widgets

Home Folder:

~/Library/Application Support
~/Library/Preferences

They were right, there’s logs, too.
$ sudo rm -rf /Library/Logs/NetUpdate/

Review: Walt gives Intego software installation TWO thumbs down. The reasons are obvious.

Safari 4 Beta – OS X Users: Wait

Installing the new Safari 4 Beta gave a great browser experience, but it stopped OS X’s Mail from working. Uninstalling it restored normality. Anyone else getting this?

Yesterday I downloaded a copy of Safari 4 Beta for Windows, and I have to say that the speed increase was obvious. Just a little playing around with the browser [especially in developer mode] tells me that Apple has something good. Real good.

However, my experience when installing the Safari4.0BetaLeo.dmg version on OS X wasn’t as hot. Well it was, but the collateral damage was unexpected.

In short, the browser worked great, just like on Windows. The speed up was there, but certainly not as dramatic as when you’ve got Internet Explorer to compare it to.

Safari 4 Beta Kills MailMy problem, however, was that when I went to open up OS X’s Mail, the Mail program crashed. Hard.

Repeated attempts did the same thing. Open Mail, it shows the cached list of old messages, it attempts to download from the IMAP servers, and clicking anywhere causes the Mail application to implode.

It was certainly repeatable.

Two things about the crash impressed me, though.

Number one, Mail was blaming it on a Growl extension. That’s nice to know that an application can tell where it’s detecting a fault.

Number two, after a few repeated failures, it was just like Apple to automatically sense my frustration and have mail automatically ask me if I’d like to reset my preferences and try launching again.

I did. And, it didn’t work.

So, after logging a few problem reports, I decided to uninstall Safari using the Safari4.0BetaUninstall.pkg.

No surprise, Mail returned to normal, and my Growl extensions were functioning just fine.

This raises the question about what the new Safari is doing that affect Mail to begin with.

But the real point here is that this software really seems to be beta. Good beta. But still beta. If OS X Mail stops working and you don’t know why, revert to your original Safari install. I bet it’ll help.

Can any other OS X users confirm or deny this is happening to them?

CONFIRMED WITH SOLUTION: Thanks to reader comments and feedback, it’s clear the problem is with current Growl extensions not being compatible; simply remove them (see comments on how) and wait for Growl to come out with an update.