Journal Journal: [geek] How to trash your Vista registry 10
I work quite a bit with different security suites for Windows. On my current laptop which runs Vista, I started with Panda, moved to McAfee, tried a different version of McAfee, switched to BitDefender, Trend, BitDefender, PCTools, BitDefender, McAfee, and finally (this week) AVG. In all cases I did a full uninstall before installing the next package.
Before loading up AVG, I unloaded McAfee and rebooted.
Windows Security Center reports that BitDefender is up and running. Huh? I did a full uninstall before, and I had it removed before McAfee was installed. I looked under \Program Files and there's no evidence it was ever there. Fine - I opened up the registry editor and removed every mention of all things BitDefender, and rebooted.
He's dead, Jim. It's so dead that it crashes almost as soon as grub tries to start Vista, and the pretty sequence of hex codes is mystifying. This is the first time I have EVER hosed up my system with the registry editor, and I use it almost monthly for the purpose of cleaning out junk left behind after installs. Glad I made recovery DVDs.
A restore later and BitDefender is still showing up as installed and up to date, even though the program is not present on the hard drive (anymore).