Scott,
First of all I would like to thank you for your hard work. I believe many people were helped by this tool which was created without any interest for material gain and you are to be admired for putting your effort into its creation. As a proof of my appreciation I have included you in the moderators group of My Fixes.
If I understand well the need to upgrade my MCREM was caused by McAfee modifying their product. Unfortunately for a good period of time I was so busy with my day job that I kept lost of track and the MCREM batch file that I initially created became obsolete. Your article (
http://damagedgenius.com/removeit/?page_id=8 ) describes how your contribution to the MCREM project came into place.
However I don't want to abandon this project that I started and I wish to contribute as much as I can to the growth of my adopted child
. So that's why today I made time to install the horrible McAfee Internet Security in order to take a look at the new things that were added into it and test the new MCREM.
First I have to say that McAfee has grown into a horrible monster. They have multiplied the number of system processes, the program it's much slower and buggier. I first tried the MCREM batch file on it. It was ofcourse unsuccessful, however I added the new registry keys into the program and I got it to work with no problems. So in case MCREM2.0 has troubles removing McAfee you can now use the batch file again.
Then I tried MCREM 2.0. I will start with the good things.
GOOD THINGS
The infrastructure of the Nullsoft Installer shell allows for quick updates using the XML configuration file.
There are issues when the batch file will not work if let's say the reg.exe Windows utility is missing. MCREM2.0 will not have this problem.
The GUI is user friendly and easy to use when you have a novice on the other side of the phone.
In conclusion moving to an executable is the right evolution path for MCREM. However the fact that you use a freware uninstaller tool provided by Nullsoft creates some problems.
PROBLEMS
The uninstaller is not as powefull as the batch file. It lacks flexibility and because of that I have noticed several bugs.
1. MCREM2.0 is much more slower than the batch file. Takes about 10 minutes on my virtual machine the batch file takes 2.
2. The removal is done after a reboot and if you don't save the file and you just run it from it's current location here's what happens after the computer restarts:
So I would suggest either copying the file on the first run in %temp% or at least have a warning like Hijackthis has.
3. After the removal process is complete we still have McAfee entries present in the registry:
.
That is mainly because the uninstaler fails to stop the McAfee services. I have followed the evolution of the uninstall process in the task manager and the McAfee Antihacker Service for example was still present in the memory.
4. The process requires two reboots that increases the troubleshooting time. The batch file MCREM requires just one reboot.
5. After the last reboot we have one McAfee process left in startup. We also have another process called cleanup. We need something to cleanup the cleanup
I think that if we could put the behaviour of the updated batch file MCREM in the nice Nullsoft shell we will have a very successful product. As soon as I have time I will dive into how the Nullsoft uninstaller works. Today I barely had time to do the review and update the batch file with the risk of getting beaten up with a mop by my wife
...
Feel free to take a look at the code of the batch file and make the necessary modifications.
One more thing. According to the initial MCREM terms and conditions the program can be used as long as the copyright note is not removed. Considering that you have made considerable modifications to the project I don't care about the fact you used the MCREM name without my approval as long as you maintain my name in the license agreement.
I would like to suggest to use a GNU public license. That was the initial spirit or MCREM and as the copyright note says I would like to keep it the same. Please mention the name of all contributors in the license agreement and articles about the file.
Here's an example:
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <2006> <Scott Lyons, Paul Ionescu (myfixes.com) >
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
_________________
Please report all bugs and abuses here:
http://www.myfixes.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=12
For more information on spyware and spyware removal techniques see this article:
http://www.myfixes.com/slides/spyware
For information on optimizing and tweaking Windows see the following pages:
http://www.myfixes.com/slides/msconfig
http://www.myfixes.com/quickfixes/categories/Registry%20Tweaks
