McAfee products can keep you protected from malware and potentially unwanted programs, but if you are planning to switch to some other vendor’s security software then you have to remove the McAfee products first. Usually, this can be done from the Control Panel’s applet “Programs and Features” in Windows. But if the usual method of installation has failed for some reason or is not installing the product properly, then you can use the McAfee Consumer Products Removal tool (MCPR tool).
MCPR tool is available for free and can be used by all the Microsoft Windows users who want to remove McAfee products from their PC. This tool can remove only consumer products and is not meant for removing any business software created by McAfee.
Before you use MCPR tool, you should try removing the McAfee software from the “Programs and Features” section in the Control Panel. The uninstall could be successful or may fail – in either case, you can now launch MCPR tool and click on the Next button.
It takes you through an agreement screen followed by a captcha entry screen to ensure that you are not going to run this tool by accident and end up removing the McAfee security software. After this, it will carry out the steps necessary to remove the products from your system. It removes all kinds of entries from Registry and the files stored on your hard drive.
The whole process takes less than five minutes after which it will ask you to reboot your PC. Restarting it necessary as even more steps need to be taken and these steps cannot be completed without rebooting your PC. After restarting the PC, your PC will be unprotected therefore you should quickly download and install a good security software on your PC.
You can download McAfee Consumer Products Removal tool from http://us.mcafee.com/apps/supporttools/mcpr/mcpr.asp.