can't uninstall programs

[xMotivee]

Ok, so my cousin has this laptop that they were trying to download skyrim to and I go to help him as he isn't very experienced with computers and I notice he has some problems. I go to just factory restore his computer to get all of this crap off and it asks me for a "password" from Norton. So, he types his password in and nothing happened. I go to uninstall programs that look sketchy, and it asks for the PW again and nothing happens. I continue looking through his programs and I notice that Norton security isn't even installed in this computer. So, I can't download any anti virus or uninstall or reset this computer. What can I do? Sorry for any grammatical errors, I'm using my phone because I dont trust typing any of my passwords into this infected machine. Please let me know what you guys think that I can do. Much help is needed!!!!

 

[dudio]

Can you try doing the restore in Safe Mode?
If you have a Windows cd, maybe it's time to give
the poor thing a good wipe?

 

[Skylyne]

Sounds like there's some decent malware on there. Definitely give it a good once over with MBAM and HitmanPro when booted into Safe Mode. If that doesn't take care of things, then you might want to consider a thorough wipe of the hard drive, and then reinstalling Windows.

 

[xMotivee]

Sounds like there's some decent malware on there. Definitely give it a good once over with MBAM and HitmanPro when booted into Safe Mode. If that doesn't take care of things, then you might want to consider a thorough wipe of the hard drive, and then reinstalling Windows.

Okay, so sorry for taking SO long to respond I never received an email telling me there was an answer posted, but I can't even get it into safe mode, when I try and start it up to enter the BIOS it won't let me do anything other than start normally. Also, the other thing that it mentions is how he's somehow killed his cooling fan. Things like this is why you should not give kids who have not been around computers much a brand new $800 laptop to just do whatever on. Especially when my mom doesn't know much about them either, I will try to get it in Safe Mode when I get over there tomorrow. Thanks to both of you guys!! I'll let you know what happens, I might just take my laptop over there to be safe and quickly respond!

 

[pr1sluys]

download the norton uninstall tool from their website. try it. though, it will likely still ask for a pw ... but maybe it'll work.

if it doesn't work, reinstall norton. perhaps you can give it a new password via this method, and then uninstall with the new uninstaller.

more risky, use revo uninstaller with forced uninstall (or something similar ... like advanced uninstaller, or wise unistaller). i doubt they have the power to kill norton, but they'll try. it might be useful to download rkill first and then try. rkill kills all processes, which will allow the uninstaller to delete norton.

if that doesn't work, take a hammer ....

 

[Skylyne]

Okay, so sorry for taking SO long to respond I never received an email telling me there was an answer posted, but I can't even get it into safe mode, when I try and start it up to enter the BIOS it won't let me do anything other than start normally. Also, the other thing that it mentions is how he's somehow killed his cooling fan. Things like this is why you should not give kids who have not been around computers much a brand new $800 laptop to just do whatever on. Especially when my mom doesn't know much about them either, I will try to get it in Safe Mode when I get over there tomorrow. Thanks to both of you guys!! I'll let you know what happens, I might just take my laptop over there to be safe and quickly respond!

Personally, I'm annoyed that most people own computers. They're very delicate, difficult to learn on properly, and no amount of anything will prevent from screwing things up outside of a will to learn. IMHO, computers are highly sophisticated tools, and most people abuse them like babies handling a torque wrench. It's depressing.

Also, unless the bios doesn't have a function key programmed to bring up the ways of how to boot into Win, going into the bios menu won't help. If you genuinely can't boot into safe mode, then there may be a deeper problem that somehow got out of hand. Losing the ability to boot into safe mode sounds less like pure malware work, and more like poor user education. Although, I could be wrong.

This is definitely a computer I'd love to work with first-hand. There are a lot of things to check out.

download the norton uninstall tool from their website. try it. though, it will likely still ask for a pw ... but maybe it'll work.

if it doesn't work, reinstall norton. perhaps you can give it a new password via this method, and then uninstall with the new uninstaller.

more risky, use revo uninstaller with forced uninstall (or something similar ... like advanced uninstaller, or wise unistaller). i doubt they have the power to kill norton, but they'll try. it might be useful to download rkill first and then try. rkill kills all processes, which will allow the uninstaller to delete norton.

if that doesn't work, take a hammer ....

Most uninstallers use the built in install GUI, and then sweep for leftovers. If the programs are requiring a password for uninstallation, then forced uninstalls would only work if they removed it by some form of a heuristics engine.