Adventures in CA Support Day 2
As I pointed out in the post Adventures in CA support, I received a routine message from CA telling me that my subscription to their CA Internet Security Suite was coming to an end and I needed to purchase an update. When I did and installed the updated software, problems arose, problems that CA support did little to help resolve. They have refunded my money. Cold comfort there.
The next round of fun that CA has brought into my life was removing their software. Using Windows' uninstall function in the control panel brought out many of those ominous sounding messages telling me that application <insert name of CA uninstall program> stopped at instruction <insert hex number here> and that the application could not "read" memory at location <insert another hex number here>. While this seemed a bit ironic since the installation of this software produced these odd messages, it wasn't all that helpful getting the software that was causing my problems off of the machine so that I could install something else.
The CA website seems designed to obscure where and how support can be found. Sure enough, I had trouble finding a page that would deal with this. I downloaded a small file that went in and pulled this weed up by the roots. I'm still not sure that all of the roots are removed, however.
When I attempted to go back to my former version of the software, it appears that downloading the new version terminated my subscription for the old version. This meant that even though it installed successfully, it wouldn't work.
I guess that means that I have to go back into CA's jungle and see if there is intelligent life in there somewhere.
Update: 7:50 AM ET
I was able to find a page in the CA web universe that pointed to a utility that would uproot CA Internet Security Suite 2008. That little utility did its job. The software has been removed. The ominous sounding pop up messages have disappeared as well.
Now I get to find another internet suite that will protect my system. That's a topic for another time, however.