MacAffee Security Suite Issues...

Maverick2272

Stewed Monkey
Super Site Supporter
I know several of us on here have Comcast, and they give us McAfee for free with our Internet service.
Well, I just found out there are some serious problems with McAfee giving false positives on everything from games to Windows Components. A false positive is when the Anti-Virus program thinks a harmless program matches a Trojan or Virus and destroys it.
Here is the link I found on it:
http://www.download-free-games.com/faq.htm
I was working on Airport Tycoon 3 for my son when I came across this. I am not so concerned with problems with games as I was with the Windows Vista conflicts. It explains why my sons computer crashed after trying to install recent updates and why my computer went on the fritz and I had to re-install McAfee after doing the updates.

So maybe next time you are cursing Microsoft and Vista... you might consider it is McAfee you should be cursing! I am not sure what I plan on doing, for now I am still running McAfee, but I don't like their slow response to these issues that is for sure.
 

joec

New member
Gold Site Supporter
You might want to consider AVG and Malwarebytes in combo. Both can be gotten for free or with larger protection for less than McAfee or Norton which both are memory hogs to boot. I've been using both of these in conjunction for 5 years now with not problems at all.
 

joec

New member
Gold Site Supporter
We use AVG Internet suite on my office machine, home machine as well as our security network computer. I also highly recommend you pick up the free version of malwarebytes at www.malwarebytes.org or malwarebytes.com
 

Miniman

Mini man - maxi food
Gold Site Supporter
We use Avast and Zone alarm free virus and firewall programs without any problems
 

Wart

Banned
I know several of us on here have Comcast, and they give us McAfee for free with our Internet service.

I don't know how it is with Comcast, Road Runner provides free Computer Associates Home Security suite, except it's the '05 or '07 release. Even considering updates and such, a two year old security program(s) is like laying the peter out to be stepped on. And CA is a PITA to use. Mayhaps ComCast is doing the same by providing an older or outdated version of McAfee.?

I had been using NIS '09 which seemed to work well, tried NIS '10 Beta ... What a Dog, here at NCT a script would regularly crash and the browser would become non responsive when entering text, and that could be forced by changing editing modes. I'm not looking to upgrading to NIS '10 when it's released.


Here is something to consider, you can get months of free 'internet security' by using vendors fully functional trialware versions or their security suites. Norton, ZoneAlarm, BitDefender, McAfee, thats about three months worth right there.
 

Doc

Administrator
Staff member
Gold Site Supporter
You might want to consider AVG and Malwarebytes in combo. Both can be gotten for free or with larger protection for less than McAfee or Norton which both are memory hogs to boot. I've been using both of these in conjunction for 5 years now with not problems at all.

We use Avast and Zone alarm free virus and firewall programs without any problems

I have not used Norton or McAfee for years. I don't thinkn highly of either companies offering.
Like Joe and Mini I have primarily used AVG but also tried Avast and both have performed well for me. No issues, no slow downs.
I'm also a fan of ZoneAlarm.
I have not tried Malwarebytes, I'll have to check that out sometime.
 

BamsBBQ

Ni pedo
Site Supporter
i use Avast and Malawarebytes as well

i am not a fan of McAfee either. Amanda got it for x-mas from my brother 1 year ago. i loaded it up after a fresh reformat. 1 day later,mcafee froze up and i had nothing but problems with it. tried uninstalling it, mcafee wouldnt let me. reformat again, this time no mcafee, had been working great ever since

anybody want a copy of McAfee?.:yum::yum:
 

Maverick2272

Stewed Monkey
Super Site Supporter
I used to have ZoneAlarm and always liked it, but since this is free from Comcast I got rid of it. It is up to date and current, and this is actually the first issue I have had with it over the last two years I have had it.
 

FryBoy

New member
I used Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite for several years, but became disenchanted when it began updating hourly, sucking up all of my computer's resources and dragging my work to a near halt.

About a year ago I switched to Norton Internet Security Suite 2009 based on positive reviews I read about it in several magazines and on line. Although I had dumped earlier versions of Norton because they were real dogs and enormous resource hogs, the reviews said the company had addressed those problems, so I figured I had nothing to lose on the 30-day free trial. The reviews turned out to be accurate.

I'm now using Norton Internet Security Suite 2009 on three computers, including a 7-year-old laptop with 2 GB of RAM running XP and a desktop with a quad processor and 8 GB of RAM running Vista 64-Bit, and it's been virtually free of problems. Still getting top ratings from the mags, too, so I have no thought of switching to anything else.

I use my computers in my business, and it's vital to my success. One thing I've learned over the years is that free is often a very expensive proposition. Pay for the best and be happy.
 

Keltin

New member
Gold Site Supporter
Avast is free, and it's one of the best out there. Better than the best pay proggie I used to use, which was light years ahead of McCaffee and Norton. You simply can't go wrong with Avast.
 

Adillo303

*****
Gold Site Supporter
What AV software to use can be an issue. The problems usually arise when a given AV software and one or more applications do not play well together.

I cannot think ov an AV software that I have not had problems with oven the years.

My personal machines have AVG. If you have something that works for you stick with it.

I would be curious to know how the vendors of free AV software, or any other software for that matter cover their costs. How many of us would work for free?
 

Doc

Administrator
Staff member
Gold Site Supporter
My personal machines have AVG. If you have somthing that works for you stick with it.

I would be curious to know how the vendors of free AV software, or any other software for that matter cover their costs. How many of us would work for free?

AVG has stepped up the marketing of their paid AV products. I suspect that many users happy with the free product to upgrade to the paid product.
Otherwise the company name is highly regarded because of the quality of their free offerings. That has to help the bottom line in some regard.
 

Adillo303

*****
Gold Site Supporter
Doc said:
That has to help the bottom line in some regard.

I am sure that it does. Many companies give away software for the embedded advertising. AV products do not advertise, that I know of. How do they pay the bills? Since they are hooked into your whole machine, could they snoop and phone home?
 

Keltin

New member
Gold Site Supporter
I’ve found that you never know how good your antivirus software is until you get infected! A few years back, I took my PC in for an upgrade, and when they connected it to their in-house network, I contracted a virus. I was using AVG at the time, and it could not get rid of the virus....although it did see it.

I did some research, and a package called PC Security Shield was rated higher than both Norton and MacAffee by several sites, so I bought it. It immediately caught and removed the virus. I was pleased.

I renewed my license for PCSS the following year only to find they had changed their engine drastically. In particular was their online (real time) packet snooper that scans every packet that comes in for viruses. This caused my 8meg net connection to drop down to a paltry 1.2 meg.....and sometimes lower.

I couldn’t deal with that, so I bought a copy of Norton. I used it for a year, and then contracted a virus....from a Tech website of all places (I was looking for a video driver)!! This one was damn persistent. Norton saw one component of it, and removed it, but after that, didn’t recognize the infection! Norton told me I was clean!!

Yet I knew I was infected. System resources were dropping dramatically, and when I put a network analyzer on my net connection, I could see my PC was flooding out with SMTP transfers. I dug into the captures and saw it was all SPAM mail. So the virus, the one Norton didn’t see, had turned my PC into a SPAM server.

Worse, the infection some how made MagicJack stop working.....no idea why.

I fought with that virus for 2 days and was getting ready to wipe the drive when I found AVAST. I installed AVAST, and it immediately saw the problem. AVAST shut the PC down, and then as it rebooted, stopped Windows from loading and performed a deep HD scan before the OS and all infected DLLs were running. It caught the virus and the 6 copies of itself it had scattered throughout the HD.

I’ve never stopped using AVAST after that, and I recommend it to everyone that I help with their PC troubles. To date, I’ve used AVAST on over 20 PCs, and have seen over 45 Viruses caught that other freeware S/W missed.

AVAST offers it’s home Desktop AV S/W for free.

However, they sell a Home Professional edition, a Business Suite, and a Corporate Suite. AVAST has flavors for MAC, Linux, PDAs and much more. It’s active engine has 7 sub engines that scan everything from basic desktop, to internet packet delivery (scans incoming net packets WITHOUT slowing down your connection – no loss of BW), mail, P2P, and more. I’ve never seen a more thorough, configurable, FAST, and reliable AV S/W package.

Also, AVAST updates itself daily, so you are always on the cutting edge when it comes to virus definitions and protection.

You do have to “register” AVAST with a valid email which gives you a key for one year of use. Then you simply renew that key every year by verifying your email address. That’s it. They don’t SPAM, so they can have my email address in exchange for such an awesome program.

http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
 

joec

New member
Gold Site Supporter
I will give this a try but so far have been pretty happy with AVG Internet suite which includes a fire wall.
 

Maverick2272

Stewed Monkey
Super Site Supporter
Well now I have another problem, LOL! I removed McAfee, let Vista finish all its upgrades and updates, then re-installed McAfee. Now Windows Defender crashes every time I start my computer, jeesh!
Any ideas on this one guys? I can't even find an 'off' button for Defender anywhere.
 

FryBoy

New member
Which version of McAfee do you have? If it's the security suite, it probably includes a firewall, in which case you should turn off Windows Defender. Click start and type Security Center in the search box.
 

Maverick2272

Stewed Monkey
Super Site Supporter
I only installed the AV this time around. I have other programs in Firefox that are protecting me, and figured I would just use Defender instead of McAfee's firewall, but now that seems to be a problem.
 
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