Trend Micro Uninstall Nightmare HELP!

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been helping my sister with an issue she has with Trend Micro p-cillin and Internet security. This covers versions 2005 and 2007.

This all started when she was trying to set up a peer-to-peer network at her husband’s business. She’s not a tech in any way, but works her way through stuff.

At the business they have Vista 64-bit and XP machines. She noticed that the network card listings in Vista show “Trend Micro” entries and they’re generically named cards. She has two cards: 1 ethernet card and one wireless network card.

The wireless network works, but the ethernet won’t. You cannot delete the entries with the Trend Micro additions on them, you cannot update drivers, etc.

There is an area on Vista (I’m not familiar with Vista to give you the screen) where it’s supposed to show the card and what’s attached, such as TCP/IP, etc. and nothing shows for the card name, you can’t update or delete it. It shows TCP/IP v4 and v6 entries both of which say “Not Connected”

She tried to update, she removed the old 2005 to update to 2007 and later found that the old version didn’t delete properly! There were leftover folders and tons of entries in the Registry. You can manually remove most of it except for the MBD and TDI drivers.

Can someone explain why it seems Trend Micro is binding to network cards (I’ve never heard of such a thing)?

Why can’t we remove those two entries from the registry? We are logged in as Administrator.

The removal tool doesn’t work that Trend Micro provides. CCleaner didn’t even show the application and Revo Uninstaller doesn’t show support for Vista 64-bit.
I’ve dug around on the 'Net and haven’t found much of any use. I’m frustrated and I’ve only been working on this for less than 24 hours. She’s spent four days – she’s ready to get out a sledgehammer and beat the computer to dust.

I’ve never come across a program (other than Norton SystemWorks) that was such a pain in the butt to remove.

Is this a corrupt registry?

Suggestions? Ideas?

Rants?

She’s to the point where she may just wipe the machine and reinstall everything fresh, but since this is a business computer, I’d really like to get it working w/out having to go to those lengths, if possible.

(Once we get this rotten thing off, she’s not dealing with this annoying program again)

2

AV programs (as a class) are often notoriously difficult to remove. Has she tried simply deleting the hardware keys under the hardware listing and letting ther system re-install the hardware?

Having dealt with some XP to Vista connections it’s probably unlikely the trend micro tag being attached to the the network card registry key is the reason it won’t connect. Normally permission issues are the culprit.

3

I thought of permission issues already, but we’re logged in as the Administrator. Full rights.

Already tried deleting those and it won’t let her remove those…

4

When I had issues uninstalling Trend Micro (because I had to install their new damn version GAHHH) I was not completely successful until I used Revo Uninstaller

5

This is on Vista 64-bit, does Revo Uninstaller work on that OS? I found some sites that said Yes, others that said No.

6

Trend Micro OfficeScan antivirus has a service running called the “Trend Micro Configuration Protection Service” or something similar. You have to disable (not just stop) this service first. Then, in the registry, you have to locate a key (somewhere under HKLM\Software\Trend Micro) called “AllowUninstall”. Set this to a non-zero value, and it should uninstall just dandy.

Given that you have already done a partial uninstall, this may not work.

7

Is Office Scan part of P-Cillin Internet Security? I don’t recall seeing anything related to it…

I went through services on her home computer (which had part of the same issue) and never saw such a service.

She can restore her work computers back to the initial install, I’ll look into that option!

Keep the ideas coming, in case this one doesn’t work!

8

OfficeScan may be a later version, or it may be the corporate version. The registry entries for it do include folders labeled P-Cillin. Sorry I can’t be of more help.

9

Thanks for the suggestions. She doesn’t have office scan, so we can’t do that one.

She’s basically said she’s done with it. Another one of my sisters is going to restore the drive so there is no more Trend Micro anything on it and she’s switching to something else.

However, I AM still curious about why it binds to network cards and protocols. If anyone can answer that, I’d be grateful. I just can’t figure out why a program would have to do that.