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I had a situation today where I needed to uninstall Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 9.0 from a computer and it was asking for the uninstall password. Unfortunately the computer had not been communicating with server for sometime and the current password would not work. We also tried the default password of ‘symantec’, but no luck.

Fortunately their is a pretty easy work around in this situation if you are comfortable with editing the registry*

Go to start, run, and type in regedit.

Navigate to HKEY_Local_Machine > Software > Intel > LanDesk > VirusProtect6 > CurrentVersion > ClientConfig > AdminstratorOnly > Security

Double click on UseVPUninstallPassword and change the Dword Value from 1 to 0. Click okay and you should now be able to uninstall Symantec without a password.

A couple of notes. I know that this works on Norton Corporate Edition 7.5, Symantec Corporate Edition 8.0 and 9.0, but I am unsure it works on versions 10 or 11.

From Microsoft "Using Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious, system-wide problems that may require you to re-install Windows to correct them. Microsoft cannot guarantee that any problems resulting from the use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use this tool at your own risk."

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We are a small computer consulting firm based in Los Angeles, but we still seem to run into our fair share of problems that are either not obvious of their fixes are not very well documented. The goal is to share these fixes with the general public and document them for ourselves in the future.

We specialize in Microsoft Windows Server and Desktop Operating Systems, Microsoft Exchange, Citrix Server, SonicWall Firewalls , Cisco Routers and Firewalls, and do a bit of Asterisk / Trixbox consulting. We are HP and Microsoft Partners. Citrix and Cisco Certified.