How to remove mcafee desktop shortcut permanently

After the installation of your mcafee product,it will create a shortcut on desktop automatically.You may don’t need it as you are already using McAfee from System Tray.But after you delete it,it re-appears every time when you start the system.Its quite annoying.We have complained about it but it is very depressed that mcafee think it isn’t popular.

Well, we have to come on hoping to find help on this matter ourself… Anyhow,Today we’ll tell you how to  delete McAfee Desktop Shortcut permanently.

[Updated]: This guide does not work now. You can check out this FAQ page on the McAfee website to permanently delete McAfee icons on your Desktop. (Thanks to abulimicdog )[/updated]

Step one:

Restart the computer, and hit F8 after the bios. Enter into Safemode then into an administrators account.

Step two:

Go start and run Command, (quickkeys: startkey+R) then type regedit.

Now hit ctrl+F, type the following MSC_ShowDesktopIcon (or you can copy and past), then hit enter.

It should take you to one of two places ether:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\McAfee\MSC\Shortcuts

or

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\McAfee\MSC\Shortcuts

You wont to be on the 1st one.

Step three: This is if you wish to make a back up copy of the Reg folder, we are about to modify.

If you don’t wish to make a back up, then skip to Step four.

Once your in: Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\McAfee\MSC\Shortcuts.

Click on file on the taskbar, then Export… Name it what ever you like! Save to Desktop or any safe location,

make sure at the bottom, its selected as branch and is as above.

Ok, Now after you have saved that file go to the file location you saved it to.

If you wish to set it back to normal after these steps just dubble click that file, and its back to how it was.

Step four:

Right click on MSC_ShowDesktopIcon click modify… and delete 01 00 00 00 and hit ok.

If you can not edit it, your ether not in Admin or not in safe mode lol.

You should now see in Data it says (zero-length binary value).

and if you go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\McAfee\MSC\Shortcuts

that should also have changed at the same time.

Step five:

Now Close everything and restart the computer, back into your normal account.

Once loaded delete that dam shortcut lol, and test it by updating McAfee…

Notice for McAfee:

And if McAfee have a problem with what I have done, then they need to fix it with an update…Or better yet BRING BACK THE OLD LAYOUT… Because this new one is a pain to get to all the main settings.Spesh when you try to change one setting, it then wants to go back to the main menu…so you have to do it all over again to change the next

By the way, its very similar to an old xp trick to remove the my pictures/music/video folders..ect..ect..