Question How to get rid of Norton and McAfee popups?

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jhsachs

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Apr 10, 2009
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I have a Lenovo laptop running Windows 11. It originally belonged to my wife, who has passed away. I don't know much about its history, beyond what I can infer from its current state. I think she had a paid subscription to Norton Antivirus, but I'm not sure. I have installed the free version of Bitdefender on it.

Whenever I start it, it displays a popup that says "Your McAfee has expired" or another one that says "Your Norton has expired." "McAfee" has buttons for Renew Protection, Protect, and Close. "Norton" has buttons for Enable Protection, Protect, and Close. Each popup is accompanied by a buh-leeep noise.

If I click either popup's Close button, it closes the popup but opens a browser window which warns me that my computer will be in mortal danger until I renew my subscription. A second or so later the other popup appears. Buh-leeep.

If I just ignore a pop-up, eventually it disappears spontaneously and the other one appears. Buh-leeep.

And sometimes I get a popup that says "McAfee Total Protection / Critical Virus Alert." It seems designed to make me think I have a dangerous virus without actually saying so.

I first assumed that these popups were legitimate and tried to uninstall McAfee and Norton. I found that neither one is listed in Windows's Add or Remove Programs applet. All of the advice I've found on the Web for removing these programs (or their popups) starts with Add or Remove Programs, so it doesn't do me any good.

Bitdefender has scanned my computer and assures me that it is virus-free.

So I can't figure out whether this stuff is coming from a virus that Bitdefender doesn't see, or from actual antivirus applications that are behaving like viruses. Any suggestions on how to get rid of it? The constant stream of popups and buh-leeep noises are so distracting that the computer is essentially unusable.
 
They sound like program notifications - probably coming from a web browser. Try this for me and let me know what you discover:

Go into Windows Settings -> System -> Notifications. Scroll down a bit to the "Notifications from apps and other senders" section, make sure that "Sort by" is set to "Most recent" then let me know what two or three apps show at the top of the list and give me their order.
 
Secret-Squirrel said:
They sound like program notifications - probably coming from a web browser. Try this for me and let me know what you discover:

Go into Windows Settings -> System -> Notifications. Scroll down a bit to the "Notifications from apps and other senders" section, make sure that "Sort by" is set to "Most recent" then let me know what two or three apps show at the top of the list and give me their order.
Click to expand...
I couldn't find the dialog you described. (I don't know what "Windows Settings" is, and I couldn't find anything like it in Control Panel. I'm hampered because Microsoft changes things around in each release, and I know Windows 10 pretty well, but not 11.)

Anyway, I think I found the right dialog by entering "Notifications" in the search box and getting a "System > Notifications" dialog. The "Notifications from apps and other senders" section was already sorted by "Most recent." The two most recent items were "xxxxx.feesvr.co.in (via Microsoft Edge)" and "yyyyyy.feesvr.co.in (via Microsoft Edge)," where "xxxxxx" and "yyyyyy" are two very long meaningless strings of letters and numbers.

Microsoft Edge is the browser I've been using, but right now I'm getting the popups even though it isn't running. I'm not sure whether that's meaningful information or not.

The "feesvr.co.in" domain makes me about 99% sure that this is a virus, but as I originally said, Bitdefender doesn't see it, and I don't know how to get rid of it.
 
So you basically just turn off notifications for that site/browser.
Click to expand...
That seems to be a shortest-distance-is-a-straight-line solution, but I'm concerned that it's also a turning-off-the-warning-signal solution.

I should be able to make the notifications go away by turning them off in the browser (I haven't tried yet), but something that shouldn't be there is making the browser send them... a virus, or the digital equivalent of a prion, or something. If I just turn off the notifications the something will still be there, it just won't be producing any obvious symptoms. What if it's planning some other nastiness? I'd much rather get rid of it unless I can satisfy myself that it's absolutely harmless.

One possibility is that I did have virus, and Bitdefender reported that my disk is clean because it found the virus and eliminated it, leaving only its muddy trail behind. Bitdefender must have a log that I could check to see if that happened.
 
jhsachs said:
That seems to be a shortest-distance-is-a-straight-line solution, but I'm concerned that it's also a turning-off-the-warning-signal solution.

I should be able to make the notifications go away by turning them off in the browser (I haven't tried yet), but something that shouldn't be there is making the browser send them... a virus, or the digital equivalent of a prion, or something. If I just turn off the notifications the something will still be there, it just won't be producing any obvious symptoms. What if it's planning some other nastiness? I'd much rather get rid of it unless I can satisfy myself that it's absolutely harmless.

One possibility is that I did have virus, and Bitdefender reported that my disk is clean because it found the virus and eliminated it, leaving only its muddy trail behind. Bitdefender must have a log that I could check to see if that happened.
Click to expand...
Completely remove Norton.
Completely remove McAfee.

Have one and only one antivirus tool.
Merged with a few functioning brain cells, Windows Defender works.
 
jhsachs said:
I found that neither one is listed in Windows's Add or Remove Programs applet. All of the advice I've found on the Web for removing these programs (or their popups) starts with Add or Remove Programs, so it doesn't do me any good.
Click to expand...
If you have already followed Dark Lord of Tech link or USAFRet links there could be a legit reason that your still dealing with the annoying pop ups.

You could go to every spot that Norton and Mcafee files are.

Program files:
Program files X86:
appdata: Local. Local Low, and Roaming
ProgramData:

Anything in those locations that are related to both programs just throw away.

Also in your browser delete the cookies. Sometime cookies can be really aggressive just keep in mind that if you Nuke the cookies that also Nukes all passwords and site settings so be cautious. Being as this was your wife's laptop in the past I would use the below method so you don't remove something you just may need in the future.

If you use Chrome in a opened browser type in --- chrome://settings/content/all --- and than you can actually choose by cookie what to delete or what to keep. Keep in mind you will be floored by the hundreds and hundreds of cookies we get.
 
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