For several reasons, some good, some bad, I needed to replace a preinstalled version of McAfee Virusscan Enterprise 8.7.0i with the new Microsoft Endpoint Protection 2012. In the past, I’ve done this by digging through lots of registry entries and deleting them, in the vain hope that it might actually do something.

But then! I found this page detailing how to uninstall using msiexec. Thinking this couldn’t possibly be that simple, imagine my surprise when a single command got rid of it.

In case that page goes away, you want these commands:

VirusScan Enterprise 8.8

msiexec /x {CE15D1B6-19B6-4D4D-8F43-CF5D2C3356FF} REMOVE=ALL REBOOT=R /q

VirusScan Enterprise 8.7i

msiexec /x {147BCE03-C0F1-4C9F-8157-6A89B6D2D973} REMOVE=ALL REBOOT=R /q

VirusScan Enterprise 8.5i

msiexec.exe /x {35C03C04-3F1F-42C2-A989-A757EE691F65} REMOVE=ALL REBOOT=R /q

VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i

msiexec.exe /x {5DF3D1BB-894E-4DCD-8275-159AC9829B43} REMOVE=ALL REBOOT=R /q

Yay!