Get Rid of MaAfee On Your Brand New Computer

I just purchased a new Windows laptop. Between all the bloat and the pre-installation of McAfee I was tempted to reformat the hard disk, purchase a copy of Windows 8.1, and start from scratch.

What a racket McAfee has. They give you a free subscription for a couple of months. So what do you do when that expires? I would bet the vast majority of people either do without virus protection, or pay McAfee every year to maintain their protection. Nearly everyone knows the dangers of being unprotected, so I would guess most simply pay McAfee.

I want the free Microsoft Windows Defender as my virus protection. With McAfee present, Defender is turned off. With a little web search, I found it was quite easy to remove McAfee and turn on Defender.

Everything you need to know to remove McAfee comes from this McAfee document.

I added one step to the process. I turned off my network connection.

This all applies to a new computer with Windows 8.1. It turned out to be really simple and painless. Here is what I did:

1. Downloaded the McAfee Consumer Product Removal Tool (MCPR) - main paragraph 2a. from the link I gave you.
2. Removed computer from my network because next step removes your protection.
3. Uninstall McAfee - Main paragraph 1. from the link. No problems here.
4. Find where you stored the MCPR.exe and run it. Just answer the questions asked. The prompt in paragraph 2f. never appeared so I did not have to deal with it.
5. When you see "CleanUp Successful" reboot your computer.
6. When you are up and running again connect yourself to your network.

Check the action center (white flag in the notification area of the taskbar). Click on "Open Action Center" and then click on "Security". You will see that your firewall is protected by Windows and your virus and spyware protection is now provided by Windows Defender. You don't have to do anything to turn it on.