back to article John McAfee releases NSFW video on how to uninstall security code

International fugitive, criminal suspect and self-described eccentric millionaire John McAfee has released a tongue-in-cheek video explaining how to uninstall the security software that still bears his name. McAfee claims that one of the most frequent questions he's asked is how to get rid of the pernicious software, despite …

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  1. AndrueC Silver badge
    Facepalm

    We use McAfee at work. We discovered last week when our network connection got upgraded that it's responsible for a 30% drop in network throughput. If only we could persuade our IT department to do something about it :-/

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      If only we could persuade our IT department to something about it...

      You have my sympathies my child!

    2. Piro Silver badge

      If the IT department have any brain cells to rub together, they probably don't want McAfee either.

      Long contracts and deals done by higher ups, kickbacks...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Truly

      Truly a complete nutter.

    4. sisk

      No doubt the IT department's hands are tied. When's the last time you met a geek who willingly used that pile of crap? No, it was no doubt foisted on them by the higher ups who've never heard of any antivirus except Symantec and McAfee.

    5. Magister

      Forced on us as well.

      <rant>

      Many people here leave their PCs turned on over night. Starting up in the morning takes anything from 10 - 15 minutes (I've actually timed it) of which a considerable proportion is waiting for the crapware to scan systems. A few systems take even longer.

      Added to out of date McAfee, Intrusion Detection software (5 years out of date), Winzip(!), a couple of application launchers, printing managment software and a couple of logon scripts to create mapped drives that don't work because the DNS servers are not dynamically managed (all entries are manually created; forward lookup zones only, no reverse lookups) and the addresses are wrong.

      Worse, we have people "managing" systems (in the loosest possible sense of the word) that actually cannot even use a basic PC. It really is quite tragic as the company is wasting so much money without getting anything in return.

      </rant>

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You work at CSC right?

        1. Magister

          No.

          It's a global company and the "support" is provided by one of the biggest vendors at an eye watering cost.

          I am aware that this is not an entirely unusual situation; it seems the bigger the company, the worse the IT provision. I can't speak for others, but the amount of money that is thrown away here on poor IT services / implementation is awful; they waste about 10 times my entire IT budget (including wages) that I controlled at my last place.

          I just get so frustrated because I know that I could resolve a lot of the issues; I've proven it several times at other businesses. But as far as they are concerned, I don't work in IT so it's nothing to do with me.

      2. AndrueC Silver badge
        Stop

        Starting up in the morning takes anything from 10 - 15 minutes

        Yeah - we also have a regular scan(*). Luckily it runs to US time so for me in the UK it's after the end of the working day. I've set myself a reminder in Outlook that I should leave my PC on overnight those days. Otherwise it hits my i5-2400 bad enough to make typing jerky. Until recently I was using a single core Pentium at home and that was virtually unusable while the scan was running. Nearly an hour of barely able to keep up with my typing.

        (*)Exact time/frequency withheld for security reasons(**)

        (**)Probably not but it's a dangerous world out there :)

      3. mark 63 Silver badge
        Facepalm

        jeezus , much sympathies......

        1. AndrueC Silver badge
          Meh

          A N Other global company here as well.

          To be fair it all works most of the time but I do find something unsavoury in the fact that our brand new 10Mb/s leased line (which is indeed 10Mb/s at the demarcation point) ends up being 5.7Mb/s by the time it's passed through McAfee, along our VPN and into the bowels of the server room over in the US. But it seems like I have a choice. Raise tickets and complain and end up feeling frustrated or just give up and let it all wash over me.

          I'm the wrong side of 40 to be getting worked up over how the company is run :)

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: boot-up woes

        I have one word for you: hibernation.

  2. Piro Silver badge

    Utterly glorious

    McAfee: so bad, even John McAfee advises you get shot of it.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pot meet kettle

    Hang on, were you just quoting Graham Cluely (let's saw a person in half on stage at infosec as a Soohos publicity stunt) calling somebody else a self publicist??

    I suppose if you wanted an expert in the field you couldn't have found a better person.

    1. Graham Cluley

      Re: Pot meet kettle

      I never sawed a person in half on stage at Infosec.

      I did once guillotine Janet "Blue Peter" Ellis's hand off. But that was at Networks 96. And I was working for Dr Solomon's at the time.

      Sophos tended to be a fair bit more corporate in its trade show presentations than Dr Solomon's, but anything that breaks the monotony of presentations about virtualization, high wire gymnastics on the Symantec booth, and dollybirds handing out USB sticks has to be a good thing I reckon.

      1. TeeCee Gold badge
        Coat

        Re: Pot meet kettle

        I did once guillotine Janet "Blue Peter" Ellis's hand off.

        If you still have it, it's probably worth a bit now, judging by the interest expressed last time she was mentioned around here.

      2. AndrueC Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Pot meet kettle

        Sophos tended to be a fair bit more corporate in its trade show presentations than Dr Solomon's,

        I've still got a couple of their cowboy T-shirts. When AuthenTec was moving out we accidentally took a couple of boxes with us. They were all XXL though more use as tent covers, really. Especially for me :)

  4. frank ly

    That video reminds me why I'd like to be very rich.

    Oh yes :)

  5. Cliff

    Prostitutes, strippers and fucking accountants

    You'd want some decent virus protection if that's your pastime list

    1. The_Regulator

      Am guessing you would want HW protection instead of SW for that kind of fest :)

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Anomalous Cowshed

    Lovely library

    Well, it's all been said or shown, either in the video or in the comments, but anyway, I love the library, it's a nice touch.

  8. nsld
    Thumb Up

    The importance of backups

    cannot be emphasised enough and Mr McAfee shows how its done with great style.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    send lawyers, guns and money....

    McAfee is truly horrendous - used to choke up machines with 99% CPU usage.

    Norton is not much better - suddenly when AV was given away free, the "big" companies went BLOATWARE.

    They annoy you a billion times a day with pop ups that 99% of "normal users" have no f*cking clue what the question / information means, let alone what to click on to "answer" it. It also behaves like a nanny looking after a three year old.

    The amount of machines I find infected by stuff that FREE software can find and remove that these AV suites miss is unreal.

    Down with this sort of thing.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Gave up after 1min 18secs

    Boring. Tedious. But at least I now know how to pronounce McAfee.

    Or... at least I now know how he pronounces it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Gave up after 1min 18secs

      But obviously this isn't the original pronunciation, as "Mac" isn't stressed in Scottish names. The original Gaelic Mac a' Phi would have had the stress on the "fee" part.

      (But most people in Scotland pronounce the software wrong again, stressing the "aff", because they don't speak Gaelic, and MacAfee isn't common in Scotland -- instead it's normal MacPhie, with a stressed "fee".)

  11. LaeMing
    Boffin

    We have McAfee on the managed desktops at work. RETCH!

    Because we have a site license, I could put it on the unmanaged laptops we use in the gallery, but the AV built into Win7 seems to work fine and won't constantly pop update reminder dialogs over the top of a displaying work - an orange icon in the (usually hidden) system bar (whatever Windows calls it) is a nice and not-obnoxious way to indicate the system needs an update next time I have it plugged into a network.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      WTF?

      Re: We have McAfee on the managed desktops at work. RETCH!

      ...the AV built into Win7...

      Er......WTF?

      Do you mean that you're using MS Security Essentials? It's a good product, but even that's not built in and has to be installed seperately.

      The only thing that 7 comes with as standard is a popup box screaming blue murder at you to install something pronto!

  12. btrower

    Heroic

    This is absolutely the way I expect a real computer guy to rock. Fuck Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

    1. The Indomitable Gall

      Re: Heroic

      Well, the fact that you included Bill Gates in there proves the treatment for your necrophilia is at least having some effect....

  13. NomNomNom

    He can always hide in the Ecadorian embassy

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Black Helicopters

      Well he could, if only Assange(tm) were not so obviously an agent of the Belizean government placed there specifically to assassinate him.

  14. K
    Thumb Up

    McAffee...

    This guy is an absolute f*cking legend...

    They should make a film about him and I vote Will Ferrel to play him, afterall "he's just living the dream!"

  15. Daniel B.

    Oh man

    McAfee really knows how to party :P and he gets to take potshots at his former product. It's kind of similar to Murdoch's trashing of MySpace, but way cooler!

    1. Andy Hards

      Re: Oh man

      But MySpace was already on it's way out when Murdoch bought it. And how much did he pay for it?

  16. Natalie Gritpants

    Watch and learn children...

    why it's never a good idea to get a tattoo. Once you get one the best you can hope for is to die young.

  17. MrDamage Silver badge
    Coffee/keyboard

    New keyboard required.

    Snorting "coke" through a crazy straw....priceless.

  18. Benjol
    Happy

    How 'bout this guy to play him?

    Johnny Hallyday (https://www.google.ch/search?q=johnny+hallyday)

    He's got plenty of experience of the same kind of lifestyle..

  19. K
    Thumb Up

    Vote for the El Reg to give him a weekly

    Spot... it'll go a long way to making up for the shortage of regular BOFH's ;)

  20. Sputnik

    Hey kids, drugs are bad for ya. Umkay.

  21. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. btrower

      Re: When Intel bought McAfee, I cried.

      Re: "It is not possible to secure a Windows desktop from its user."

      Priceless poetry. This conjured up the most hilarious image in my mind. I actually laughed out loud. It's funny because it is too true.

  22. lansalot
    Happy

    Perfect!

    Exactly how I'd behave if I was loaded. This is how EVERY lottery winner should act !

  23. C 18
    Big Brother

    I have insider feedback

    They're just glad to finally have the hope that they'll soon no longer be working for an American corporate with 'Mc' in the name...

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Just saying

    I've managed AV software for many years stretching back to Dr Solomons. Most complaints about slow systems can be resolved with configuration - not just limited to Mcafee software but any AV vendor.

    Most of the current crop of AV use a form of intelligent caching saving scan time.

    Scheduled scanning can be cancelled/deferred in consumer and corporate if the admin allows it - if the admin does not allow deferment this is hardly the vendors fault.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Daily Scan

      What a stupid idea.

      Q: How does an IT department think it is necessary to scan every file on a workstation on a regular basis, when all opened files are subject to a real-time scan anyway?

      Things to consider: in a network you usually keep important data on servers. In order to download or copy a file it has to be opened and therefore subject to a real-time scan.

      A: They didn't think, it didn't even occur to them to look at the default settings or consider how the configuration might be tailored to their requirements.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "15 year ago" - plurals?

    Usually when there is more than one of something we change the word to show as such - often by adding a letter 's'.

    Why are so many people incapable of understanding this?

    An example:

    "I took out a two-year contract. That means that the contract will run for two years."

    Note also the use of a hyphen in the first sentence (sorry if that's a bit too technical for you)..

  26. KierO
    Thumb Up

    So what I would have done...

    If I was rich.....this video is SOOOOO what I would have done.

  27. Doozer
    Gimp

    I just had some oik at my local PC world try to sell me the benefits of McAfee. I asked him if he had five minutes to spare... I played him the video and then said "so do you think I want it then...?" and the daft arse said that he thought I would like it!

    My thoughts about McAfee the man... He is actually quite cool :D

  28. Andy Hards
    Thumb Up

    Shirley I'm not the only one

    Who couldn't see anyone but Kenny Everett's Marcel Wave?

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