I recently uninstalled Mcafee anti virus off of my winXP laptop. It uninstalled without any problems, but now when I connect to my wi-fi or ethernet it says connection established but will not show any web pages. I get a message saying Connection Interrupted after the page try's to load for a few minutes.

I've looked on some sites and tried a winsock fix which did not work.
MSN Messenger connects but wont let me send or receive messages. Firefox still runs it's startup updater and finds updates but will always say no connection available when I try to install the updates.

Any ideas on what I messed up?

It sounds like it may have had a built in firewall gone awry. I would double check for any remaining McAfee components in Add/Remove programs and take them out if you find any. If you don't see any remaining McAfee components there, you may want to try the McAfee Consumer Product Removal tool from this page:

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

This basically scans your computer for any trace of their products and removes anything that may have been left behind. If you have any other security products (another antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall, etc), you may want to remove them as well. If you're still having issues, the next step will be some basic network troubleshooting to see where the connection is getting cut off.

Generally, I don't recommend most security products like McAfee due to how invasive they can be. In recent years, Symantec has improved the quality of their Norton products and the standalone Norton Antivirus 2009 is a good solution. For added protection, you can also enable the built in Windows firewall.

Norton? Really? I haven't heard anyone recommend Norton for anything in years. I used to use Norton Internet Security 2005, but after that version every version since slowed things down way too much, and then left tonnes of stuff behind after uninstall. I've been using ZoneAlarm since coz it doesn't leave a trace behind when you uninstall and it doesn't slow things down much, but I'm getting sick of it now coz unless you keep resetting the auto learn feature, you get a warning message every time a program tries to do something. It's like, warning, Internet Explorer is trying to access the internet. No shit. McAfee is the worst I've ever used though. You're well rid of that if you can get rid of all traces of it.

I didn't get to choose Mcafee cause it came on the laptop when I got it

I ran MCPR and it works great now! YAY!

It sounds like you where having some kind of DNS error. Ah well it's fixed now.

Norton and McAfee are both garbage, Use ESET Smart Security if you want an all in one firewall/antivirus. Very easy to get a free subscription if your interested PM me. (there are alternatives that may or may not be very slightly better or worse depending on how you look at it, but they are much harder to get for free )

They've actually improved their product greatly since 2007. I'm still not a fan of Norton Internet Security, but Norton Antivirus is minimally invasive, takes very little resources and is a generally quiet and self-maintaining application. Their definitions regularly rank among the best. If you haven't used it for a while, I would recommend trying their 15 day free trial. It also removes without a hitch, unlike previous versions.


Glad to hear everything is back up-and-running, it sounds like the uninstaller probably left the service component of the firewall behind.


ESET usually ranks at the top in most detection bechmarks and it is very fast/non-intrusive. Personally though, I would only go with the antivirus product if I were to use it. I've found 3rd party firewalls to be very intrusive and generally not provide that much more security than a properly configured router.

I don't recommend 3rd party firewalls, it's cause more problems then it's worth, I would stick with Routers and Windows firewalls. As for anti-virus, I recommended Kaspersky Anti-Virus, it's has a high detection rate and I find it the least annoying.

On new laptop I would recommend installing a fresh clean copy of Windows then install the necessary software and drivers, that way you get less problem with your laptop. I did exactly that with my new DELL, with a fresh copy of Windows 7 Professional that I legally got from the MSDNAA for free.

My laptop also came with Mcafee it is so annoying!

I agree with the firewalls thing, I thought he originally had a firewall+antivirus combo from McAffee so I was recommending a Firewall+antivirus replacement.

Anyway I actually started using the firewall just to try it out, and never ended up uninstalling it. Once you have it configured right it works really well and stays out of the way. It's handy for blocking pirated stuff from accessing the net as well The only annoying thing is for some reason it boots people off my wireless if I don't add them as an exception. I'm not even sure how this is possible.

I used to use Zone Alarm, it was ok except when it forgot its settings, or randomly decided to block sites for no reason.

But eventually the C drive crashed, and after replacing it and reinstalling, Zone Alarm would completely freeze the computer whenever I tried to torrent anything.

So, out it went, forever. I downloaded some free firewall and it works fine.

Yeah I've used Zone Alarm before, It is a good firewall but also a pain.

I installed ESET and got the same connection errors, Uninstalled it and the errors went away.

I'm not sure what to do about an anti-virus now

Just ESET antivirus or antivirus and firewall? It's possible that software firewalls are set to block your wifi by default. You'll be able to set them up so they don't, it's just a case of knowing how to do it in the program you're using. It usually involves opening a port, or giving certain programs full outgoing and incoming access. If it's just antivirus then I don't see why it should affect connection.

I'm using McAfee VirusScan Enterprise (got it through work so get free automatic updates every few days), it can be configured to block ports (especially IRC). Something to watch out for.

The functions of firewall, spam filter and virus scanner seem to be merging into one product these days.
It's just a matter of finding a good one.

And then stopping it from disabling programs you actually want to use.

It's ESET Anti-virus alone, no firewall.

I have the same antivirus on my desktop and it installed fine and works fine so I'm stumped.
All the settings are the same as when I installed it. If I set my windows firewall to allow all I still get the connection error....

Out of curiosity, do you use more than one browser? and if so, do the connection errors occur on all browsers or just one? At this point, I think you may want to create a second user account to see if the issue is duplicated there as well. If it affects another account, that will tell us that it's at the system level and not related to any changes the software may have made to your user account.

I usually always use firefox.
I have been trying on IE when I get the error on firefox and IE gets the same error.
It seems to happen only when I install an anti-virus, I've had it happen 4 times now on various anti-viruses.

Wierd. Maybe one of your internet related components has had a virus or spyware or something attach itself to it, and the antivirus programs are detecting it and blocking access to the component. If you do a full scan do they come up with any results?

When I do a scan with ESET the virus database is too out of date to find anything.

sent you a PM about updating it

It sounds like it is possible you have a virus. Can't say for sure yet though.

A virus infection is definitely possible, or maybe some system files have been corrupted. In either event though, you may want to consider backing up your data, formatting the drive and reinstalling the operating system. While it may be possible to resolve the issue at hand, a lot of the time you'll find future problems down the road. If you go this route, I would highly recommend installing and updating one of the better antivirus programs mentioned (ESET, Norton and Kaspersky are all good choices) before moving any of your data back. It also wouldn't hurt to back up the files to an external hard drive if possible, this way if a virus is detected in the backup it can be removed by the software.

Lost count how many times I've reinstalled windows.

yeah, it seems to screw itself up eventually even without viruses.

I actually haven't had to reinstall Windows due to any problems for longer than I can remember, it has had to have been at least 5-6 years. I usually end up upgrading the OS or re-tasking the computer before anything like that happens. I'm also very selective about what I install and I avoid any common sources of viruses/spyware. I think the longest running install I have right now is on my Media Center, it's been running XP MCE for about 4 years now. I run all of my emulators on it, some of which don't work to well with Vista or 7 so it will probably stay on XP for the foreseeable future.

Is their anyway to update the anti virus without connecting to the internet or a way to download the update from another pc?

Symantec provides a manual definition update for their Norton Antivirus software:

http://www.symantec.com/business/security_...ail.jsp?gid=n95

NOD32 on the other hand, I don't beleive ESET provides definitions outside of the updater software. I know McAfee provides manual definitions as well, but I'm assuming you probably don't want to go that route.

Well I need it working for school so I might have to pay someone to fix it today.

You can get ESET updates on torrent sites but I don't know if ESET actually makes them or not. I just update it with the auto update.