The Quest to Uninstall MagicDisc

So sometimes I play tech support to my dad.  He reckons it’s good practice for me, which is a pretty valid reason.  I often call it my n00b adventures, because I don’t know what causes the problem, but I can find out how to fix it (thank you Google, my friend).

Recently he decided to download a perfectly legal tool – or so we thought.  It’s called MagicDisc and it’s used for opening ISO files (after he discovered WinRAR didn’t do the job he wanted).  My dad did a bit of research of it and found plenty of good reviews (which I’m doubting that they’re real reviews at all at the moment).  Once he installed it, he found it didn’t work.  So he decided to uninstall it.  But he couldn’t.  His computer froze.  He rebooted, and tried again.  Still frozen.

As it turns out, he wasn’t the only one with this problem.  There were heaps of forum posts on this error.  But after much searching it all came down to the MagicISO SCSI Host Controller, also known as mcdbus.sys.  To fix it, he had to do:

1. Enter Safe Mode (by pressing F8 during reboot)
2. Go to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers
3. Delete mcdbus.sys
4. Reboot.

Now he could uninstall the MagicDisc program.  Another way (and probably more simpler) is a System Restore. However the above process shows which system file is the cause of the problem.

I’m not even sure why it happened.  It’s not even malware – but it’s considered to be 32% dangerous.  It could possibly be because it was an older version of MagicDisc.  However, dad’s now decided to search for more trustworthy software.

More useful resources:
http://www.sevenforums.com/software/3263-cant-uninstall-magic-disc-causing-crashes-2.html