Microsoft announces "end of life" date for Windows XP

[scrubjaysnest]

Picked up a new Toshiba from Best Buy, win 8.1, wanted them to set up but they weren't interested. Got home; took 20 minutes to figure out how to get it to recognize a flash drive Then went to install my anti virus software, cant there is an unactivated copy of McAfee installed and you can't delete it turns out until you first activate it To late already tryed to use control panel...nothing happensBack to best buy tomorrow with the laptop. I hate getting a new computer.

[Padgett]

Did you go to Control Panel>Programs and Features and uninstall it there ? If not there it is not installed so can just delete the whole McAfee directory in C:\Program Files (x86)

[scrubjaysnest]

Originally Posted by Padgett

Did you go to Control Panel>Programs and Features and uninstall it there ? If not there it is not installed so can just delete the whole McAfee directory in C:\Program Files (x86)

Yes as I mentioned in my above post you can't just go to control panel any more to remove some uactivated preloaded software. Some of it has to do with the new anti theft protocals that come with new computers. Some and McAfee is one from what I found on the internet lock the computer so it can't be used.

[Padgett]

Say what ? Lessee I have five computers and tabs with 8.1 and a desktop and a tab running Win 10 and Win 10 Enterprise (also a gaggle with Win 7, one XP, two luggables with DOS 6.0. And then there are the Androids, and the Macs and the iPad (don't have an iPhone my smart watch only works with Android), and a few instances of Linux). My first PC was a VAX & played my first compuer game in 1957.

Is what pays for the TM but generally do not mention that.

Meanwhile I have had trouble getting rid of unwanted software before but not McAfee. True sometimes you need to grab system privilege to dump. What exactly is your problem ?

ps just realized with the new versions of Windows they try to make you use a cloud account with little real access. I always skip that and create a local admin account first thing, only use my MS account to access MSDN.

[RottieMom]

Scrubjaysnest, I had to bite the bullet too and get a new laptop. I hated to give up my XP operating system, but you do what you gotta do. I just bought an interesting hybrid tablet/laptop (Lenovo Yoga Pro 3) this past weekend and it runs Windows 8.1. I installed Webroot security software and to get rid of McAfee that came on it all I had to do was right click on the McAfee tile and it had an Uninstall option and that got rid of it.

[Bill]

Win 8 is not very popular, for the kind of reasons you are experiencing. I wonder if BestBuy would consider removing Win 8 and installing a registered copy of Win 7 in its place?

Bill

[ShrimpBurrito]

Whenever you buy a computer from a large brick/mortar store and online retailer, you can expect for it to be plagued with the "trickware", and as some of you have experienced, it can be a pain to get rid of and reconfigure your machine.

Fortunately, there are alternatives, short of building your own machine. Find a smaller computer builder, and buy from them -- they are not paid by McAfee, Netzero, Ask.com, etc. to put all garbage on there, so they don't. And they will put whatever OS you want on there. And while they won't sell you a $400 laptop, they are fairly competitive if you want something other than a bare-bones machine.

As I get older, I have far less patience for mind games, sales gimmicks, and crappy customer service, and find myself more than happy to pay a few extra bucks to be able to talk to a straight-shooting sales rep that isn't in India AND that I can consistently call after the first call. Same with tech support, or any other business, for that matter (don't get me started on cell phones).

I bought my last computer from Maingear.com and had a good experience. No affiliation with them, of course.

Dave

[Padgett]

Win 8.1 is a free upgrade from 8 and makes it easy to boot to desktop. Right click on the start square also brings up a lot of things like shut down (do not need to pull up a charm).

To me the metro interface is best suited to a small touch screen tablet but desktop is a lot better if you have a keyboard and mouse.

I was hoping for a tablet I could use both in my car and at home with a dock but the latest examples are leaving out the GPS. To me a tab without GPS is just dumb.

Win 10 seems more like Win 7 on steroids.

[Redtail Cruiser]

Originally Posted by Bill

Win 8 is not very popular, for the kind of reasons you are experiencing. I wonder if BestBuy would consider removing Win 8 and installing a registered copy of Win 7 in its place?

Bill

+1, on Windows 7. We just upgraded to a new computer from eBay. We had Vista on our old one, so needless to say we're much happier with 7. Definitely more user friendly.

[scrubjaysnest]

Originally Posted by cmboyd

Scrubjaysnest, I had to bite the bullet too and get a new laptop. I hated to give up my XP operating system, but you do what you gotta do. I just bought an interesting hybrid tablet/laptop (Lenovo Yoga Pro 3) this past weekend and it runs Windows 8.1. I installed Webroot security software and to get rid of McAfee that came on it all I had to do was right click on the McAfee tile and it had an Uninstall option and that got rid of it.

We looked at those but never heard of the brand so went with the Toshiba which we have always had good service with.
Unfortunately Lenovo I just learned has a contract to load their Pokki software on new machines. You can't tell the difference between it and the malware of the same name. It also loaded like malware and didn't give you a choice. Now if we keep the machine there are 11 more programs to get ride of.
For now I can give a +1 for my daughters old win 7 machine; it will see a flash drive when you plug it in on like win 8.1 which took me 20 minutes and two trips to the internet; the first gave wrong instructions, but I got it to see the drive finally. Still wasn't able to load my anti virus software because of McAfee already n the machine and now way to remove it. You know it's bad when someone puts a 8 minute youtube video up on how to remove it.