Uninstalling Symantec Endpoint Protection without the uninstall password
ElementZero | March 19, 2009In a previous post, I talked about removing Symantec Endpoint Protection from your corporate network via a vbscript that ran through Group Policy. I had a problem though where I had uninstalled the program from all my computers, but I had it running on one server also.
As I went to uninstall it from the server, it asked me for the uninstall password. At this point, I had already removed the Symantec Endpoint Protection server as well, so setting the uninstall password was not possible. Although I knew what the uninstall password was, it occurred to me that what would I do if I had not known it? After searching around a bit – I found the solution.
First, go ahead and uninstall Symantec Endpoint Protection via the Add/Remove Programs. When the Uninstall password box comes up, right click on your task bar and open “Task Manager”. Go to the processes tab and look for msiexec.exe. There is probably more than one of them – one of them is for the password box. Just go ahead and pick one, and hopefully it will be for the password box (if not just restart the uninstall process). Once you kill the password box, the uninstall will continue as normal.
Of course, one wonders how “secure” the uninstall password really is since it can be “hacked” so easily.
Dude….you seriously saved my @$$…….I spent hours trying to figure out why i could not access an .exe. off of a USB drive. Tried stopping/disabling EVERY MS security center/service, and then it struck me about Symantec.
Worked like a charm, and my file is no readable off the thumbdrive. Symantec was stopping it from even being read on the drive.
You rock!
Thanks again,
Irish
If you are wondering what Anti-virus solution to go with next, you might want to consider ESET NOD32. I talk about this here
http://www.omegaprojex.com/index.php/2010/05/19/my-latest-anti-virus-endeavor-eset-nod32/
Just wanted to write in, thanks for posting this. This totally worked, although I had to use taskkill /F at the command prompt. The uninstaller password box was locking focus, so I was unable to click on the Task Manager.
Just a note, the msiexec.exe for the password box seemed to be the one that uses less memory. For me it was ~1.5MB, and the other one was ~15MB.
I have not been able to kill that process to get rid of the password. it blocks me from clicking OK