How do I get rid of Symantec's GARBAGE From My T60?

Hey Peeps,

My T60 came in a week ago and has a major problem. Lenovo installed some of Symantec's crap programs on my drive and they WON't uninstall. So I call Lenovo's customer support line and am told that it's basically a software issue I have to work out with Symantec. ***

The logic from Lenovo's rep is they don't know the workings of another company's software so all they can do is walk me through Add/Remove Programs. My logic is what Lenovo installed, Lenovo can uninstall. It's their machine and they should know how to get rid of problem software.

What *** that Symantec prevents a user from removing something that isn't wanted.

Anyone else had this same problem?

 

symantec...
i think it is norton one... gets annoying and worthless for me
although i don;t recommend this because after word is painful (erasing, finding) but if you have time and some softwares, it would be okay
go safemode on xp
and erase manually from your hard drive. it is mostly located at prgram files..
try to search for it and delete

 

I have been forced to manually delete it from the registry using regedit. I searched for "Norton" first then "Symantec". It took more than 30 minutes to hit F3 - Delete - Enter over and over again - probably 150 entries in the registry. It is truly an abomination and, to me, is completely worthless. Good luck

 

Search for a Norton Removal Tool, it'll uninstall all Norton products.

 

Norton Removal Tool.

 

It might be too late for the tool since he or she already messed with the registry I had the same problem with anothe program.

 

Format and do a clean install.

 

can you do a clean install with the x60t?

 

When I used Add/Remove Programs on my T60, all the Symmantec junk was removed cleanly (though there were multiple items in the list to remove). No registry traces left over. This was with Vista.

 

Hey All,

Thanks everyone for your help! So far, I've done the following to solve my problem:


1. Add/Remove Programs. What a joke! The only thing you can do here is remove a single Live Update program. Symantec blocks anything else from being removed with BS error messages.

2. Program Files. I could manually delete some files but not others.

3. System Registry. I tip toed through the registry trying to find where Symantec had buried itself.

4. Symantec Customer Support. After explaining my problem to the support tech I went back to the registry for more file deletions. The call was free which was cool of Symantec.

5. Symantec Removal Tool. Thanks to the poster who provided this link. Looking back I should've done this first rather than trying to do everything myself.


After all this work, I did a search for 'Symantec' and came back with 1 result. Symantec is still rooted in C:\Program Files\Common Files under 'Symantec Shared'. And now when I try to do certain things I get this:

New Error Message:

"The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable.

Click OK to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder .msi containing the installation package 'Symantec Client Security' in the box below."

Use Source: C:\SWTOOLS\APPS\SCS\

and this,

Windows Installer Message:

"The path, C:\SWTOOLS\APPS\SCS\ cannot be found. Verify that you have access to this location and try again or try to find the installation package, 'Symantec Client Security.msi' from a folder from which you can install the product, 'Symantec Client Security'."

I guess I'll call Symantec again. These software makers have real cajones designing their products like this. I used to be a big fan of Norton, but not what the company morphed into.

 

I can understand how frustrating something like this can be. If the aforementioned Norton Removal tool seems to work, great. I would ask them for their scrubber program--unless we're talking about the same thing here.

That and a run of CCleaner ought to do the trick.

Oh, and please watch the language in your posts. Please refer to the Forum Rules for more informaiton. Thanks.

 

So when I get my t61 I shouldn't do the add/remove program feature? The norton removal tools is a better way to go about it?

Right now I use AVG free as my anti-virus tool. What is the best free or fairly cheap anti-virus product? I want it to use the least amount of resources on my computer.

 

Lenovo offers a program called the "Base Software Administrator." Basically it allows you to select which programs you want installed when you do a restore from the recovery partition. This is a pretty handy feature as you can guarantee nothing from Norton will be there because it will never be installed. You can also remove things like the AOL crap they put on there. This tool used to only work with XP but now they are claiming that it works with Vista too... definately good news for all of us that hate the crap they preinstall on these things.

Here's the link to download: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=TVAN-ADMIN#TBSA

And here's a link to Matt Kohut's blog entry about it: http://www.lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=63

 

That'd be awesome if they put that feature on the new t61's. It would save me so much time in trying to get rid of the bloatware I don't want. I feared I was gonna have to do this manually as I don't have any extra clean versions of vista laying around and all the other guides I've read about how to do a clean install seem overly complicated for me.

 

I think it works for any of the Thinkpad notebooks, you just have to download because it does not come preinstalled.

 

Zamiel, probably one registry cleaner works about as well as the next, but I like RegSeeker (the price is right - free). Works for me. With it and also by doing a manual file/program search and deletion for both Symantec and Norton I was able to get rid of all the preinstalled garbage on my machine.

 

Well, again I have to give props to Symantec because they took care of the problem without charging me a dime. I used my cell phone to call 'Standard Support' but after 15 minutes of muzak took my wife's phone and opted for 'Premium Support'. Surprise surprise; a tech came on the phone right away.

The red headed step child file that wouldn't delete was a vpshell2.dll in the Common Files folder. The Symantec rep had me go into Safe Mode and delete all files in the folder except for this one. After restarting the computer I went back to said folder and was able to delete the remaining file. I purged the recycle bin, restarted, and voila! I was Symantec free.

The only thing the techie was curious about was why I didn't want to use Symantec's products. Puh-lease Louise! I told her of how various apps I'd used in the past had taken over my system and caused endless grief until I got rid of them.

I've installed a suite of applications from WebRoot to protect my system. I love my T60 and hope to write a review on it soon. Thanks again for all your help, guys.