BT Virus Protect - Disabled

[dhandley]

I see this problem has been going on since at least JAN 2019 so almost 2 years.

I have 3 devices using 3 of my 15 BT Virus Protect Licenses I added a 4th last year which some 6 months ago started whinging it was disabled.  It's a Windows 10 Laptop and was at University some 40 Miles away with the daughter,

I've dragged it home for the week to see if I can sort it out.

What I've tried is listed below, After each step has been followed I have completed the appropriate Reboot when requested.

1. Removed BT Virus Protect using Control Panel add/remove progs
   1. Rebooted
   2. Reinstalled BT Virus Protect from a fresh link downloaded from My BT
   3. Within the 1st couple of minutes at most the installation goes into a deactivated state.
   4. When selecting to Activate I get prompted to logon to the MCafee BT Net Protect with an email address and password which is foreign/unknown to me 
2. Removed BT Virus Protect using Control Panel add/remove progs
   1. Rebooted
   2. Downloaded and ran the McAfee Product removal tool MCPR
   3. Rebooted
   4. Reinstalled BT Virus Protect from a fresh link downloaded from My BT
   5. Within the 1st couple of minutes at most the installation goes into a deactivated state.
   6. When selecting to Activate I get prompted to logon to the MCafee BT Net Protect with an email address and password which is foreign/unknown to me.
3. Contacted McAfee support who advised they were unable to assist and that I should contact BT

Points To NOTE

1. My existing 3 devices are all activated and all work correctly
2. I contacted BT Support to be informed that the problem was due to my contract approaching its expiry date so I therefore renewed my contract.  I don't believe this was the problem as my existing devices still work OK.  That said I have renewed my contract and still have the same problem
3. Contacted BT Support again today 21/11/2020 had a long and painful session where we again tested and retested the above installation methods to arrive at the same conclusion IE the product becomes disabled and needs activating. The service technician agreed to log this with the BT Protect Team something I had requested at the outset of technical conversation (eg my words, You need to focus on collecting the required information to enable an escalation to a higher technical resource "  this request just got fobbed off

Does Anyone anywhere have a solution to this long outstanding problem please 

Many Thanks in anticipation

Doug

[Anonymous]

The MCPR tool is not an uninstaller in itself, you should use the standard uninstaller first then :-

Restart

Run MCPR

Download and run the free free version of CCleaner to clear out orpaned entries in the registry

Restart yet again

Re-install BT protect.

Don't be tempted to try and shortcut any of the restarts, it won't work.

[Willyjames]

Hi

I have been having the same problem for over a week now on my new laptop.

Btprotect keeps deactivating and showing phoney mcafee email address etc.

I spoke to support today and after 15 minutes of being passed around I was told to simply reinstall. That is not feasible if the protection is gone but BT seem to be saying it’s due to concurrent updates while BTProtect is being updated. They do not know and they do not care.

What a company!

[dhandley]

To use the excuse of.concurrent installations is rediculous I have re-installed many times now just to hit the same.problem.

I have checked back ground tasks and services and can see nothing else running 

[gg30340]

My advice and that of others on the forum would be to uninstall BTVirus Protect. It can cause problems on some computers and is a resource hog and always seems to be one update away from more problems.  Do a search of the forum to see the problems. There are far better free antivirus programs available such as Avast Free and AVG Free and if using Windows on your computer, Microsoft's own free preinstalled antivirus now gets good reviews.

If you do want to uninstall BTVirusProtect use this guide and make sure you use the BTVirus Protect/McAfee removal tool after you have restarted your computer.

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/13523

If you do uninstall BT Virus Protect make sure that you install another AV product or activate Windows onboard antivirus if your version of Windows supports it.

[dhandley]

I have done all of that more than once including using the.McAfee virus removal option and rebooting at each and every option.

Many thanks for the response sadly not much use if your suggestion is to use an alternative product ! which isn't really a solution to the problem 

[gg30340]

Might not be a solution to the specific problem but is a solution to the useless product and its many problems!