Did Kaspersky wreck my installation?

I have a new 24" iMac. I installed Parallels 3 and Windows XP on August 16. Everything was working fine. I bought and installed Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 yesterday, August 26 (not realizing that a version of this was included free with the Parallels product). A few pop-ups came up from Kaspersky that I wasn't sure how to answer. Whatever I answered, I think it was wrong. Now I can't get the Windows "Start" button to show, nor can I look at Parallels in "coherence" mode. I can see the Windows desktop, but that's it. No applications, no ability to use Windows.

I don't have a clue how to uninstall everything and start again. Even if I did want to do that, my Parallels backup CD has not yet arrived in the mail.

I am having a bad experience with Parallels technical support. I paid $29.99 to get phone support, but I received no instructions on how to access the support. Parallel's phone number in Washington state was out-of-order most of today. Finally, I got a nice customer service representative on the line who told me the number to call for paid tech support. I called that number and was on hold for at least half an hour, during which time I was often told I was "number one" in line. Then suddenly I was "number two" in line. Then I got cut off. I tried calling two more times. I was on hold for a long time, always being told I was "number one" then "number two" then "number one" again.

I am scared that I've done something wrong to my computer. Not to mention I'd like to use the features of my Virtual Machine again. As you can probably tell, I am not very savvy with computers. I'd welcome any suggestions.

 

To followup: All ended well here for me. Parallels tech support called me personally to resolve this. The support technician could not have been more helpful. He advised me to read the Kaspersky user guide, which I certainly will. Apparently, Kaspersky is a great program but finicky about configuration. Anyway, I have learned my lesson to pay more attention to what I'm doing when I install something to the virtual machine.

 

One more thing, in case anyone, anywhere, is ever curious about what went wrong on my computer. Kaspersky was "blocking something," no doubt due to how I sloppily configured it. So we disabled Kaspersky. I will enable it again after I read the user's guide, which I certainly will.

 

Can't disable or uninstall Kaspersky

A Parallels support technician helped me disable Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 two days ago because of a problem I was having with Kaspersky blocking my ability to use the virtual machine. But, within minutes of hanging up the phone with Parallels tech support, Kaspersky appeared again as active within my VM. Now, each time I start up the VM, I get the message, "Please wait while Parallels desktop is installing Kaspersky." Then the VM shuts down and restarts while I wait, helpless. Every single time. I tried uninstalling Kaspersky. Although the system *tells* me I've uninstalled it successfully, Kaspersky keeps "installing" again each time I start up the VM. I tried uninstalling Parallels and reinstalling. But when I opened my VM, it was the same as before. So uninstall doesn't really work? I am frustrated. I don't know what else to do. I may have to pay $29.99 again for tech support.

 

Okay, Kaspersky Internet Security appears on my D: drive. There is an exe file, KISStart.exe, that I cannot delete. This is what is causing my problem. Now I need to know how to override the system and delete it. Here is the error message:

"Cannot delete KISStart: Files on this CD-ROM drive are read-only. You cannot copy or move files over to this CD-ROM drive."

My question: What CD-ROM drive? I have one, but it's empty.

I just want to have nothing to do with Kaspersky anymore.

 

Kaspersky defeated

To close the loop on this fascinating conversation with myself, I'd like to say, "Don't pay $29.99 for telephone support until you try Parallels tech support via email first." Technicians are standing by, around the globe, at all hours, to help you. My relief came at 2:59 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. A God-like technician named Andrew helped vanquish the evil influence of Kaspersky in my virtual machine for all times.

To the good people at Kaspersky. I'm sorry for disparaging your product. I'm just an idiot with a Mac. Please make your product more helpful and less "finicky about how it's configured." Your pop-up alerts could also use some wordsmithing. As I recall, one of them said something like, "Process is trying to insert process in [blah blah] ..." Huh?

Nevertheless, I realize that it is my fault for not reading the entire 83-page user guide for Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 before trying to use it.

 

Hi there. Having the same problem with the guest OS insisting there's a Kaspersky disk in the empty drive. I can't instal any software as a result as the OS thinks there's a disk already there.

What advice did this 'God-like technician' give to get rid of it?

 

Hello,

Boogabazooga, please sorry we did not answer before.

When talking about Kaspersky issues you'd better address to Kaspersky support.

I would not recommend neither writing e-mails to Parallels, nor paying for telephone support as we are not good at supporting third-party software (and I don't think that other companies are good at supporting someone else's products).

Best regards,
Xenos