McAfee and Losing Internet Access

This is the second time I am having this problem. So I am convinced that it is McAfee that is at fault. This happened to me on two different machines each running Windows XP.

I was uninstalling McAfee because I was moving to another anti-virus software and it appears our friends at McAfee just do not like that. In both cases, upon uninstalling, my computer lost network access. The first time this happened, I called everyone (except McAfee) including the manufacturer of my ethernet card, router, and of course my ISP. At the end it was Microsoft, yes that big evil giant that we all love to hate, that came to my rescue. The MS tech support staff was courteous, polite, knowledgable and they got the problem fixed.

A year later on another computer I faced the same problem. Uninstalling McAfee antivirus from the PC and it screwed the LAN connection. Basically the TCP/IP stack gets corrupted and needs to be rebuilt.

So if you ever unsinstall McAfee antivirus from your computer and lose network access, try the following:

Open a command prompt and type: ipconfig /release
then type: ipconfig /renew

If you get the following message:

Windows IP Configuration

An error occurred while renewing interface Network Bridge : An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket.

An error occurred while renewing interface Local Area Connection : An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket.

McAfee screwed you :-)

Go to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817571 follow the steps and hope you can get it fixed.

SprintPCS

Adding to the list of just bad service and corporate deception. A few weeks ago one of my cell phones was having a problem. So I called the SprintPCS support line. The support person said I had to take the phone to their store to have it checked. As a result of the inconvenience I was apparently facing (which I was not) he said he was offering me the SprintPCS voice dial service for free. I found that odd because my phone already has voice dial, but I didnt pay much attention to the issue.

A few days ago I get my SprintPCS bill and I notice that the so called free service offered to me is free only for 2 months. WTF? Is SprintpCS that desperate that it has to resort to cheating its customers? Why doesn't sprint just give its employees a gun each and send them out on the streets to mug people?