I Steal Software

Not too recently, my install of McAfee VirusScan 8.0 started complaining that my free year of anti-virus protection had expired, and it urged me to buy a service renewal several times a day. This got very tiresome very quickly.

Let me just say that it is possible to uninstall the software, and if you know where to look, you can wipe the registration information to get another free year of updates when you reinstall. Now, to be perfectly honest, my mostly legitimate copy of VirusScan 8.0 came about as a result of a class-action suit against McAfee wherein anyone who owned a certain specific older version of VirusScan was entitled to a new version and one free year of service. So McAfee has never, technically, gotten any money from me for my copy of VS8. But you know me — I never throw anything away. So, a year later, I still have "VSH8ENUS.EXE" and I'm not afraid to use it.

The process is somewhat convoluted and all my .html files now bear Internet Explorer's blue 'e' icon, so it's not all Guinness and Hustlers, but it works.

The big idea isn't that VirusScan stops scanning your PC, but that it stops getting free downloads from us.mcafee.com. This can be corrected by completely uninstalling all McAfee software on the system, reinstalling it, and then providing new registration info. Mailinator is your friend. A couple of reboots later and VirusScan is humming along, up-to-date and rarin' to go.