If you work in a corporate environment, you and your computer can become the unsuspecting victim of Symantec’s gruesome Endpoint Protection software. It is a gigantic program that includes anti-spyware, antivirus, network threat detection, and all sorts of other types of super security.
I, of course, understand the need for these programs and use them myself, but Endpoint Protection requires huge resources. Besides, it is almost impossible to turn off or kill. Actually, I tried to kill all processes associated with it, but it still keeps working.
The worst thing about the program is that it consumes all the power of your computer’s processor. My computer never crashed due to 100% CPU usage while the program was running. I tried unsuccessfully to use MSCONFIG to uncheck the services and launchers for it.
In the end, I tried to remove it, but I couldn’t even! The program was password protected so that no sane person could remove this crap! I understand that the password is needed so that employees cannot remove it, but if you cannot do any work because your computer is unbearably slow, then it should at least allow removal and notify the administrator.
In addition, you should try the Symantec or Symantec default password with a capital letter. This is probably not the case, unless your admin is very lazy, but it’s worth a try. In any case, if you are in a similar situation where you do not know the password to uninstall Endpoint Protection, you will be glad to learn about a quick way to bypass the password and still uninstall the program.
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When prompted for a password, enter Task Manager by pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and selecting Task Manager, then click the Processes tab. Now find the msiexec.exe process and kill it!
The image above is actually from Process Explorer, not from the Task Manager, but it will have the same name there too. Once you complete the process, the password prompt will disappear and the deletion will continue! Msiexec.exe is a Windows Installer utility that is called when you install or uninstall a program.
I’m not sure if this will work with newer Endpoint versions like 13 or 14 because I haven’t tried it. Let us know in the comments if this works for you or not.
After uninstalling the program, my computer’s CPU usage dropped to normal 2%. Let’s talk about a terrible program. If you want a really good antivirus, choose Kaspersky. Enjoy!
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