Removal of McAfee SecurityCenter Trial Program Causes Failure of PowerChute (PCPE) Install

XPS 8500 Windows 7 PC from Dell.

After several days of rebuilding the system, I tried to install the APC PowerChute

Personal Edition (PCPE) 3.0.2 program to manage my UPS.

The PCPE install would not proceed beyond the Destination Folder window --

clicking Next in that window would cause the Next button to flash, but

nothing else would happen. I then had to cancel the PCPE install; the

cancellation took place normally.

 

A google search on PCPE problems showed others had seen a similar

problem, but the suggested solutions (e.g., re-registering vbscript.dll)

did not work for me. I had used TeraByte Unlimited's BootIt Bare Metal

to partition the disk on the PC and to do frequent backups to an

external drive as I built my new system. To narrow down the PCPE

install problem, I restored a very early backup to a test partition.

This backup was essentially the bare Windows 7 system plus some other

programs Dell had pre-installed. I had completed the Windows

installation on first boot by supplying my user name, password, etc. I

had installed no programs myself before making the backup. So this test

environment was about as close to the start as I could get.

First I tried installing PCPE on that bare system. It worked.

(Actually I cancelled that install after I had gotten beyond the

Destination Folder window where the PCPE install had failed previously.)

I then did the next step I always take with a new Dell system; I used

Control Panel "Programs and Features" to remove the McAfee

SecurityCenter 30-day trial program that Dell pre-installs. What I

would normally do right after that would be to install Norton Internet

Security. Instead, for this test I tried the PCPE install again. Now

it failed at the Destination Folder window, just as it did on my

production partition. As a final nail in the coffin, I ran a Windows

System Restore to reinstall the McAfee program (and whatever else its

uninstall had removed). Now the PCPE install worked again. So the

McAfee uninstall was breaking something that the PCPE install depended

on.

I notified Dell, but so far have received no response on this problem.

 

So I started googling again, e.g., for MCPR.EXE.

It turns out the removal of this trial program has caused problems for many

people.

See the Red Dawn post in en.community.dell.com/.../20181898.aspx

The MCPR solution suggested there worked for me.

 

I did the following on a fresh test partition to which I had copied my

Windows 7 production partition. I downloaded MCPR.exe from

download.mcafee.com/.../MCPR.exe.

Long ago I had removed the McAfee program from the production partition

(and thus from this partition copy) via Control Panel "Programs and

Features"; you must do that removal before running MCPR.  

I next ran Ccleaner, then turned off Norton Internet Security and World Community

Grid (BOINC); I had no desktop applications running.

I then ran MCPR from an administrator command window.

MCPR did its thing.

I restarted Windows and ran the PCPE install. It fully installed PCPE with no

problems.

After some testing, I repeated the above on my production partition.

What made this problem hard to solve was that the McAfee uninstall was

done a number of days before the PCPE install problem was seen.

Many other changes were made in the interim as I was rebuilding the new system.

Relating the McAfee and PCPE events was not at all obvious.