Cannot uninstall "Backup Exec Remote Agent" on Exchange Server

COMMENTS:
If Symantec T/S told you to manually uninstall Backup Exec 9.x and 10.x Remote Agent, did they tell you exactly what keys to remove from your registry?  Typically there will be a number of Keys (exclude values & data) and the search must be very diligently & carefully done if you are not to miss something you will need to delete.  There may be some other names besides those of 'Symantec' that you should include and you really need to find out from Symantec what they are.  These would be keys that point to either program.

An excellent utility to use for uninstalling problem software & safely cleaning up your registry is JV16PowerTools.  PowerTools is a large suite of small powerful utilties (See:  http://www.macecraft.com/) and well worth the $30 price.

It is likely that PowerTools will be able to solve your problem or assist you in tracking down parts of your registry associated with installed software that is not obvious, enabling you to manually remove keys in your registry that may be causing the uninstall failure.

I have not used Backup exec since it's been owned by Symantec.  Symantec typically installs a utility called LiveUpdate.  If Backup exec or agent installation is updated using this utility, it will be critical to remove ALL files and subdirectories identified on your hard disk as Liveupdate or Symantec.

Liveupdate files are easily corrupted and used to cause me untold difficulty when I used to use Symantec software (such as Norton Systemworks, Antivirus, or any Norton product) and the solution always involved a completely fresh install of ALL symantec software after carefully cleaning up the registry and deletion of all files, directories and subdirectories installed by the software.  This is not as easy as it may at first appear, but if you are careful to get everything out, you should be able to do a fresh install that works.

SUGGESTED PROCEDURE:
Do you have any other Symantec product installed?  Do you have any version of Liveupdate installed?  The company provides a Removal Tool that is free to download and use.  I would use this free Removal Tool first, following directions, make a fresh install and see if your problem is resolved.   If that didn't work, I'd then double check to make certain all keys are removed that were originally installed by the software.  If you still have problems, you probably haven't removed all the necessary keys, and PowerTools will help you to do that.

Make certain, of course, to reboot your computer each time you make changes to the registry.  An easy way to verify whether a liveupdate agent or other symantec agent is being loaded, despite your best effort to eliminate them, check your process list in Windows Task Manager.  If a liveupdate is running, you'll see something fairly obvious, such as 'Liveupdate . . . ".  Other processes might be running, of course, if you have other Symantec software installed.

One more thought.  If you find that you attempt to delete Symantec or Liveupdate files from your hard drive and the system gives you an error, you know that you still have installed software.  A relatively painless way to solve that problem (besides removing the offending key in your registry) is to boot into Safe Mode and then delete the files/subdirectories.  When you reboot into the normal mode and Symantec tries to load the offending driver you will receive an error message and from that message you should be able to track down the changes you need to make on your hard drive and registry.