Windows 7 How to delete Mcafee Vaults folder

[Hardstarburst]

Please do not suggest I contact Mcafee on this, I could have backed up and reinstalled Windows 7 in the time I have already wasted dealing with them. I only have one word for them and it is USELESS. I have a Mcafee vaults folder on my desktop I cannot get rid of. The folder was not installed there by a Mcafee product, I did not have any Mcafee products installed at that time. The folder came to be on my desktop because I made an image of a friends laptop drive that was unbootable. After I made the image and stored it on my current computer, I wiped the drive and did a clean reinstall on the laptop. I then recovered from the image my friends files and folders and put them in a data folder on my desktop, where I did a virus scan. Several items were found and removed, and apparently he had a Mcafee program of some type because in the documents folder there was the vaults folder. Now it is on my desktop and it will not delete. I have taken ownership of the file, allowed my user full accesss, and tried some command line stuff to no avail. So can anyone tell me how to make Windows 7 take control of its files and folders and delete the file I want it to? One clue might be that I thought one time I saw somewhere that I have to get permission from some user , not me, had a big long number like s-2241-22368- or something like that. If anyone could point me in the right direction, my nerves would appreciate it...

 

[zvit]

Mcafee is a horrible anti virus to use. You should use something good and free such as...


List of free safe antivirus/Malware software:

1. Microsoft security essentials: Link Removed
2. AVG: free.avg.com

They are a lot better then McAfee.

 

[Doctor Wizard]

I see this is a very old thread, but this is still a problem as of September 2022 because Dell is factory installing this piece of crud** on their current machines, so I'm resuscitating this thread for anyone still struggling with it in 2022++.
I Googled and Googled and never found an answer anywhere but after inventing several creative new curse words-- hurled at McAfee-- I figured out a solution:
Open an elevated command prompt (as administrator)
Type: icacls "Full\Path\to\Folder" /reset /T /C ⏎
Or for example: icacls "C:\Users\TEMP-DESKTOP-ABC123.000\Documents" /reset /T /C
That doesn't delete it, but it does reset all the NTFS permissions so that you can delete by ordinary means, such as in File Explorer.

** Because McAfee pays them to. Boooo! Shame on you, Dell!!

 

[Neemobeer]

Have not messed with vaults, but in most cases yes you can take ownership of anything in Windows, provided you are a member of the administrators group and then grant yourself access and subsequently delete files/directories.

 

[retiredMichael]

I see this is a very old thread, but this is still a problem as of September 2022 because Dell is factory installing this piece of crud** on their current machines, so I'm resuscitating this thread for anyone still struggling with it in 2022++.
I Googled and Googled and never found an answer anywhere but after inventing several creative new curse words-- hurled at McAfee-- I figured out a solution:
Open an elevated command prompt (as administrator)
Type: icacls "Full\Path\to\Folder" /reset /T /C ⏎
Or for example: icacls "C:\Users\TEMP-DESKTOP-ABC123.000\Documents" /reset /T /C
That doesn't delete it, but it does reset all the NTFS permissions so that you can delete by ordinary means, such as in File Explorer.

** Because McAfee pays them to. Boooo! Shame on you, Dell!!

Gold Star for Dr. Wizard! Just what I've been looking for over the past week since uninstalling McAfee; now using F-Secure Safe. Your suggestion works, and, is greatly appreciated. Thank you for sharing.

This website has a McAfee Removal Tool that might be of interest to others:

Redirecting

Running *.exe McAfee Removal Tool took 5 minutes, however, did not allow removal of the McAfee Vaults folder even after a reboot.