This was supposed to be an easy one, but I knew in advance it would be difficult.
I was removing Norton Security from an Apple Mac. I decided the system is designed to make it almost impossible.
it is socially engineered to make the merest enquiry about the use of the removal tool fail.
A few examples.
1) Ask the help system. It froze only allowing entry whilst simultaneously holding down a mouse button.
2) Checking with Google. Symantec has packed the top of a Google search with pages they control, all of which offer misleading advice.
3) Attempting to use the so-called remove button built into the utility. Except the helper agent that runs the button was not working so the button didn't show.
{Most people will have given up by around here}
4) Attempting to download the uninstall helper. Except every copy of it was the one for Windows.
5) Being pointed to a (you must be joking) separate page to download someone else's utility (Nope).
6) Being patronisingly asked after I'd looked at each of their help pages, whether it was useful (No)
7) Being pop-up asked if I needed help (Chat) but then ignored.
In the end, I used the Activity Monitor to force crash the Norton helper agents that were still running. This simulated a Norton failure.
Then I pretended I wanted to re-install the product. Norton gave me a link to a failed installation page for Mac and from there I was able to navigate to find this helpful page:
It includes a link to the utility file:
which in turn requires one to boot up and run a Mac Terminal Session (ie in Unix) to work through the script.
Halfway through, the script failed too and simply hung.
I rebooted and then re-ran it and sure enough, it carried on to delete about 100 Norton files scattered all over the Mac. I know these files are used to provide nag scripts to re-install the product, so it was necessary to get rid of them all.
However, it worked.
1 comment:
Oh the joys of anti-virus software!
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