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My PC woke up from sleep on its own. When I signed in, there was a popup from McAfee. I discovered that it had just been installed at the precise time my PC was awakened. I uninstalled it but am having a lot of trouble getting rid of all the related files. I'm getting help for that on a separate post. But I am wondering how the heck this happened. I had not installed any software that McAfee might have sneaked in on. Also, several Word files and Outlook that I had open when I put the PC to sleep had been closed then reopened when it woke up. Is this somehow related to the uninvited installation of the McAfee program? I have Microsoft 365. One other thing that also happened was that I got a notification that a Windows Insider Preview Cumulative Update was ready for download and installation. I'm on the Beta channel. Just a coincidence?
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Wow. Interestingly, I just found out that the other PC on my home network received a request to install McAfee! This was the standard Windows UAC popup. This is all so disconcerting. I didn't even get the UAC prompt. It just went ahead and installed. It's an invasion.
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Terry,
I just read your other post in the thread where you're trying to uninstall McAfee and noticed that you were trying to manually remove files from a folder. That's never the correct way to do this and as the person helping you there indicated, you must always use the normal Windows uninstall process first, and then in the case of major AV products like McAfee, go to their website, download and run the latest version of their uninstaller/clean-up app which cleans out any remaining pieces of the application the original uninstaller didn't.
The reason this is required is that AV programs often go through dozens of revisions between the time they are first installed, and you finally decide to remove them. If you don't run the clean-up app the original uninstaller may miss portions of the various other revisions that were installed or updated over time, leading to the precise type of problems you're having. Something left on the machine that you missed trying to manually remove the AV app deciding it needs to repair itself that downloads and reinstalls the entire app again.
So stay in that other thread and let the person there help you to uninstall McAfee properly and completely, since you'll never find all of the pieces of it manually by yourself and simply keep having these problems as a result.
To any moderator seeing this thread, please merge it with the other where OP is already being aided to reduce potential for confusion.
Rob
Hi. I appreciate your reply. I've had my current setup for about 18 months and had uninstalled the McAfee that came with it. If anything updated and brought the Mcafee back, I don't know what it could be. Plus, I just don't see how it could get installed without my permission and wake my PC and close and reopen 365 up in the process. Very disturbing.
Unfortunately some of these products can use some quite invasive technique to get on to your PC, which is quite ironic given what their purpose is.
Thank you for your clarifications. I will be following the directions followed on the other post.
