Search This Blog

To adblock users

Hello! If you see this, you are most likely using an ad blocker. (Or maybe you have JavaScript disabled. Or maybe my web server is down.) I have no problem with ad blockers; in fact I use one myself. If a site tries to deny me access unless I disable it, I just find a way to circumvent that. But if a site politely asks me to do so, but still allows access to the site, I disable it for the site. I am asking you to please do the same for this site. I can't make you, but I would appreciate it. Thank you! :-)

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

How to get rid of NOD32 without a password

My dad recently gave me an old laptop his office was throwing away, but it came with ESET's NOD32 antivirus software on it. Normally this would be a good thing, but it was preventing me from visiting certain websites because it "suspected" they had a virus, and I needed a password to uninstall it which I did not know. However, I found a way to uninstall it without the password.

  1. Reboot your computer in Safe Mode. (press F8 before the Windows logo appears.)
  2. Select Safe Mode (or Safe Mode with Networking if you don't want to print this out)
  3. Log in as Administrator (this might not be necessary, but it's what I did.)
  4. Click the Start menu and right-click My Computer
  5. Click Properties, then go to the Advanced tab
  6. Click Environment Variables
  7. Under User Variables, click Add
  8. Type "DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES" for the variable name, and "1" for the value (without quotes).
  9. Click OK, and then click the Hardware tab.
  10. Click Device Manager.
  11. In the new window that appears, go to View>Show hidden devices
  12. Uninstall the following devices (Action menu>Uninstall): eamon, eadrv, epfwtdir, and any of them that say "nod32"
  13. Close Device Manager and the System control panel
  14. Open your NOD32 installation directory (usually C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET NOD32 Antivirus)
  15. Delete everything in there except shellext.dll (if you can, it's okay to delete shellext.dll, but for me I couldn't delete it.) Alternatively, move it to another folder.
  16. Go to Start>Run, and type "msconfig".
  17. Click the Startup tab.
  18. Scroll down until you see "egui", and uncheck it.
  19. Click OK and reboot.
When you log back in, NOD32 should no longer be installed. Some things may remain, such as registry values, but they shouldn't interfere with anything. I don't know if you can then reinstall it with a different password, but it's worth a shot.

I hope this helped!