Installing McAfee Total Protection software

Perhaps this should suggest to you that you should use something other than McAfee software on your computer.

If you must use McAfee software and running the McAfee Consumer Products Removal Tool does not manage to delete this registry key and clear the way to do the install, you probably need to take ownership of the key (that's a guess, because you haven't provided the complete text of the "all kinds of error messages" you received).

1. Back up the registry or at least create a manual restore point
2. Open regedit in a "computer administrator" account
3. Right-click the key at issue and select "Permissions"
4. Click the "Advanced" button
5. Click the "Owner" tab
6. Select your user account as the new owner
7. Check the box to "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects"
8. Select the "Permissions" tab
9. Check both boxes at the bottom
10. Click "Apply" and respond "Yes" and then click OK
    
11. Back on the main Permissions dialog, select the desired user name from the Group or user names list and select the check box under the Allow column for the Full Control row. Click OK.
12. You should now be able to delete the key

When I right click on the McAfee key I get the following message.

The requested security information is either unavailable or can't be displayed.

Thanks

Thomas

Bruce

      I have tried running MCPR several times, with no help.  Thanks for the suggestion.

Thomas

The registry key is probably corrupted.  The following may help (no guarantee).

Make a manual System Restore point ... just in case.

Download RegDelNul from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/regdelnull.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

• Open a Command Prompt window using a "computer administrator" account
• Drag RegDelNull.exe from wherever you downloaded it into the black Command Prompt window
• On the same line, type the registry hive where the McAfee key is located.  For example, if the McAfee key is in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, type hklm
• Type -s
• Press Enter

For example, if you downloaded regdelnull.zip to your Desktop, right-clicked, and selected Extract all, you would see a folder named Regdelnull that contains two files, RegDelNull.exe and Eula.txt.   Using the same HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE assumption as above, the command line should then look like this:

    C:\Users\

WARNING:  The scan may find another key with an embedded null.  Only delete the McAfee key.  Do not delete anything else.

When I run the program I get the following.

C:\C:\Users\Wayne\Desktop\RegDelNull.exe hklm –s

RegDelNull v1.10 – Delete Registry Keys with embedded Nulls

Copyright (C) 2005-2006 Mark Russinovich

Sysinternals – www.sysinternals.com

Scan complete

No Registrys keys come up and McAfee is still in the Registry.

Thomas

OK.  So the registry key doesn't have an embedded null character.

Let's go back to the beginning.  Open regedit.exe and navigate to the problem key.  Make sure to expand it so that all of its subkeys, if any, are displayed.  Use Snipping Tool (type snipping tool into the Start > Search box and press Enter) to take a screenshot of the regedit window and post it in your next Reply (use the "insert image" icon in the Reply window toolbar).

What happens if you right-click on the problem key and select "Export"?  Can you save the key data as a *.reg file?

Make a System Restore point.  What happens if you right-click on the problem key and select "Rename"?  Can you rename the key?

If either of the two operations above results in an error message, please provide the complete text.

When I right click on the Mcafee, expand is dim.

When I try to rename the key to "Xerox".  It lets me type Xerox in the place of McAfee, but when I presss enter it comes up with the following error message

The Registry Editor cannot rename McAfee.  Error while renaming key.

I could not get the Export to do anything.  I went through the motions, but I never could find the file.  I tried it twice.

I need to learn how to operate "snipping" I will work on that part now. I got snipping on the screen, but did not know how to save the image.  I found the image icon on the reply screen.  I will learn how to save the image.  I have never used snipping before.

Thanks

Thomas

This is a picture with the snipping tool of the regedit screen when I first open the screen.

There are several brute force techniques that you might try, but I hesitate to recommend them.  The more you start messing around with the registry, the more chance you have of really messing things up.

At the very least, make a System Restore point.  A registry backup that doesn't rely on starting Windows to recover would be better.  There was a very useful utility for XP called ERUNT that accomplished this.  It will work for Windows 7, but you need to turn UAC off first.  http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/

Click Start and type cmd.exe in the Search box.  When the link to cmd.exe is found, right-click it and select "Run as administrator."  Respond as needed to the UAC prompt.

Type the following command and press Enter:

     reg DELETE HKLM\Software\McAfee /f

If that method doesn't work, the only other thing that I can think of is to use an offline registry editor.  See the following:

http://www.wintips.org/how-to-edit-and-modify-registry-offline/

https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-edit-windows-registry-key-values-without-booting-in-windows/