Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Silently and remotely remove Symantec Antivirus

There is even a line there showing what program it calls to actually uninstall which is (surprise, surprise) MsiExec.exe. Just typing that line in a console starts the removal process just as if you called it from add and remove programs.
The actual line needed with all of the proper arguments is.
"MsiExec.exe /norestart /q/x{BA4B71D1-898E-4306-AE87-8BA7A596F0ED} REMOVE=ALL"Typing msiexec /? will give you a dialog box with what all the arguments
corporate edition of Symantec's antivirus can require a password to be uninstalled.
to fix the password issue, we can start up regedit and from the file menu connect via the network to the remote machines registry. Then navigate to the following key.
 "[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\INTEL\LANDesk\ VirusProtect6\CurrentVersion\AdministratorOnly\Security]"
In that key make sure the two following values "LockUnloadServices" and "UseVPUninstallPassword" are zero. That takes care of the password asking problem.
Lo and behold the remote computer dutifully uninstalls that pesky virus program ready for a fresh install.

The account that you do all this work under has to have domain administrator privileges and the remote computer has to be joined to said domain.

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