Uninstalling Norton from a new Vista Laptop

SHyland

Having problems uninstalling Norton Anti-Virus program from newly purchased laptop runing Vista Home Premium. I want to install AVG as an alternative AV program. More familar with XP up to this but assumed I could do the deed via Control Panel/Add, Remove Software....but no, it says I cannot uninstall as I dont have the required permissions........What the hell is going on here? Its my laptop....Did a quck search on Google for this and found tha Norton had a tool do uninstall their own products and noticed that a few people around the world had a similar problem as me. Does anyone have experience of this? Is this Norton uninstall tool OK to use? I dont want to screw up the laptop but I want Norton gone. Thanks in advance.

Saruman

You probably need to be logged in as administrator? Vista has strange admin rights, even if you have actual admin rights.. sometimes you actually need to be logged in as the user administrator... Though this probably does not apply to home premium... I have only used business.

Feelgood

Sounds like your user account on your PC doesn't have administrator rights??.
Are you signed in as administrator??

Try right clicking the uninstall icon in the Norton Programmes folder and then select "Run as administrator".

SHyland

Thanks for the quick replies (Saruman and Feelgood)....I will look at the administrator side of things then, sounds like a solution....:)

Keano

Is Norton not one of those annoying programs on new systems that is simply wont let you remove it completely even with all the administrator priviliges??

ethernet

Download the Norton Removal Tool for the version of Norton you have. Run it as admin if you run into trouble. It can take a while. You'll need to reboot. Then install AVG.

SHyland

Ill let you know when I've had a chance to try the "get administrator rights" route.......I have sucessfully removed this program (and other big AV programs) on XP systems without a problem, putting AVG in place of it.....its something I have done a few times now on a few machines. Never once had a problem. However that was all on XP machines, we are now talking about Vista here so perhaps I need to learn a couple of new tricks.

SHyland

Thanks ethenet....if the "adminstator rights" route doesnt work, this will be my next plan of attack.

SHyland

Sorry....ethernet...not ethenet.........typing always remains a problem for this 2 finger typist....!!

Gadgetman496

For starters, Vistas UAC (User Account Control) is set in such a way as to restrict users privileges even if there account is set as Administrator.

What you really need to do is invoke the hidden "Administrator Account" which has full autonomy (Like the previous XP Administrator Account has.)

Once you have done that, run the Norton Removal Tool as suggested above.

Here's how to do that:

Vista Administrator Account, Enable & Disable.

Open the RUN command box.

Type cmd & hit OK

Close the command window.

This will cause Vista to put the Command option on the start menu as a recently used program.

Right click the command prompt icon

Choose RUN AS ADMIN

Type the following at the command line prompt to turn on the Administrator account.

Net user administrator /active:yes

Type the following at the command line prompt to turn off the Administrator account.

Net user administrator /active:no



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