Yesterday was a bit of a computer challenge day here at our house. It was a day of change and that can be frustrating.
I had to be in a meeting up in Charleston (which is about 2 hours away) at 9 AM. So as is my usual habit, I got up early to write up a blog post and then head on my way.
As I was shaking the sleep out of my eyes and getting my thoughts together, McAfee, our anti-virus/firewall software decided it wanted to upgrade. Since I am the computer person in our house not Gorgeous, I decided I better let it so the program didn’t keep asking her all day long while I was away.
That decision turned into a bit of a hassle. The set up said it couldn’t install a portion of the programming because I had AdAware installed to root out spyware and apparently they are incompatible. Would I like to skip it? Sure.
That was a mistake.
When the stuff finished its 20 minute download / install / reboot process there was no anti-virus protection at all. I knew I didn’t want to leave the computer for a day with no virus protection with Gorgeous having to use it all day. That could have unrecoverable consequences.
So I uninstalled AdAware. And rebooted the computer. 10 minutes.
Then I had to hunt around to find where I could put the anti-virus portion of McAfee back on. They sure didn’t make it easy. I finally had to go into my account on the web site. And that involved yet another search on my part. What was that account’s password again?
25 minutes later I was ready to install the missing component.
Fortunately the second install should go quicker because it would only install the missing portion, right?
Wrong.
It appeared to go through the exact same process and took just as long the second time complete with reboot.
Something like an hour and a half into it our computer was protected again. And I had really hustle to make my meeting on time.
When I got back home Gorgeous mentioned something about email being slow. Another 30 minutes of poking around and I narrowed down the culprit to the new anti-virus portion of McAfee. Specifically the scan outgoing email function was totally gunking up Outlook, keeping outgoing emails from going out while they were scanned indefinitely.
The only way I could get it to work was to disable the scan outgoing email portion completely. And that puts a nice little notice in the system tray that keeps telling me how unprotected I am.
In my meeting in Charleston we got on the subject of Port Security and I mentioned that there will all ways be a bit of a tension between commerce and security. The only way to be sure of security is to completely shut off commerce. Balancing the two is the trick.
But apparently that is McAfee’s new approach to virus protection. If they completely stop email traffic they are sure to get a good handle on virus propagation. Oh, and after a quick check of McAfee’s Forums, I am not alone in my frustration with this new version.
Unfortunately that cure may be worse than the risk of disease for most folks. I know it is for us.
Then Gorgeous got up this morning and found out she missed a sales target with her business because the company she represents made some major changes to their web site too. She put in an order yesterday which would have taken her over her target with a bunch of hassle because of not being familiar with the new set up. And apparently the new pre-order form looks very similar to the old finalized order form so she thought she was done but she should have clicked one more button to finish it.
As a result she missed out on a sizable commission bonus.
Days like that are times when I appreciate the emotion that David poured out in the Psalms.
O LORD, how long will you forget me? Forever?
How long will you look the other way?How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul,
with sorrow in my heart every day?
How long will my enemy have the upper hand?Turn and answer me, O LORD my God!
Restore the light to my eyes, or I will die.Don’t let my enemies gloat, saying, “We have defeated him!”
Don’t let them rejoice at my downfall.But I trust in your unfailing love.
I will rejoice because you have rescued me.I will sing to the LORD
because he has been so good to me.
Sometimes it can be encouraging to know that even great men had their own struggles.
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I’ve tried McAfee and didn’t like it because it was so slow and interfered with the functioning of other things on my computer, especially, as you say, email. At work, I have no choice. At home I’ve switched to AVG from Grisoft. It plays well with Ad-Aware, has frequent updates, has kept me virus free, and is free for personal use.
Rick, I’ve been using McAfee for virus protection for over 8 years and have been a big fan. I added their firewall protection a few years back when we upgraded to DSL.
I have never had any issues with them until yesterday. And I have all sorts of significant slowdowns and problems with Norton on my work laptop (which the company owns and I have no choice as well).
I suspect they rolled out the new version a little too early. Since I have a good history with them I’m willing to give them a chance to fix their problems. However if they don’t get their act together fairly quickly I’ll have to consider a switch…
Hey Chris,
hope you are having the needed luck to get your McAffee product install and configuration straightened out.
I used to be a big proponent of McAffee as well, though there have been reasons that have led me to the conclusion that McAffee or Norton are not the products to choose for any of my computers.
Main reason is the fact that, similar to the reasoning between Windows and Linux, since Windows is so much more popular than Linux for Home PCs, there is a lot more people trying their hardest to break it or into it … same applies, so experts say, to Antivirus programs. The more common and the better known, the more people are working on finding ways around them.
For Derek’s customers, we also use Grisoft’s AVG as a free solution, which combined with Adaware and Spybot S&D takes care of viruses, ad- and spyware issues.
For customers that have a bit more understanding of things, we occasionally use the free version of ZonAlarm as a firewall application. Although that is very much a pain to configure it just right.
Another free antivirus software is called Avast, although I found it to be a bit slower when booting the computer and it takes a bit more RAM as well.
Anyways, just my 2 cents worth to the problem …
Oliver
Hey Ollie, Thanks for your 2 cents. I should give you back about 20 bucks in change!
I may just check it out if I continue to have problems.
I’m having the same problems. Even with McAfee outgoing mail scan turned off, emails are not going out smoothly. And the Site Advisor component is slowing down the start up of Internet Explorer, and at a quick glance I can’t figure out how to delete that part of the so-called upgrade.
I am apalled they have released such a half baked upgrade and will be moving to something else.
Peter, I use Firefox mostly instead of IE and the SiteAdvisor doesn’t seem to slow that down quite as much. It does slow things down, though,
I’m kicking myself on that one because I remember that portion of it being a separate install. I haven’t looked at uninstalling it yet because it’s been crazy around here and I haven’t had a chance to look into it.
But a quick look around my computer and you’re right, McAfee seems to have made it difficult to unintall their stuff if you wanted to.
Take a look Here at the SiteAdvisor Help site. It says to get rid of the IE plugin via the Add/Remove Programs menu.
Of course I don’t see it in mine. I initially installed the dang thing in FF but when I bring up IE it is there too. With FF they say to go to the Extensions menu under Tools and uninstall it from there.
I got suckered when this whole thing hit me first thing on Monday morning. Mornings are not my best time of the day anyway and this one was intensely frustrating!
There documentation was poor for the SiteAdvisor at the install. If I’d realized I was adding a separate optional component I never would have clicked the yes button. Even so, I’m not going to compound my problems by messing with it this morning. But I may look into it.
I’m also having issues. I have to use aol for work and it won’t let me reach any sights through aol. I feel like i’m back on dial up!
Laurie, It makes you wonder if they tested the version at all before they released it.
I know Ollie above personally and he knows his stuff. Here’s a link for the AVG free version if you want to try it to get back to high speed again and stay protected.
If McAfee doesn’t get this sorted out right quick like I imagine they are going to start hemorrhaging customers like, well, like AOL.
I hope for your sake you never have any problems like are making the rounds if you ever decide to cancel your AOL account! If the reports are true, their retention tactics are downright insane!
Mcafee lost me with the Version 11 upgrade.
Email either doesnt work or is super slow
Internet pages dont load…Over and over you try..But nothing works or if it
does its very slow.
Run fast…Run far….Away from mcafee at this time. I did.
I got norton 2006 package 15 day trial (YES they have problems i read)
but GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
it works fine. Several people I know have used norton without EVER having a problem. Im giving it a go.
I see ebay has norton package (firewall,antivirus..etc.)for as low as
19 bucks shipping either free or 3 bucks…not bad.
Rat
Big Giant Rat, I don’t blame you for leaving McAfee. If I hadn’t paid a year in advance I’d probably toss the program too. I imagine they will be hemorrhaging customers over this.
But there is no way I’ll ever go with Norton.
My company has it on my work laptop (I don’t have a choice on that one) and there was an update to Norton corporate had us install about a year ago that ground Windows on all of our laptops down to a slow crawl for everything. Now just the start up and shut down cycles take 5-10 minutes each. It takes forever for programs to load. Norton just uses up too much system resources. Microsoft Office documents are constantly crashing now.
It’s a running joke in our office “I gotta re-boot my computer.” Because we know whoever says that is only going to be able to stare at a screen for the next few minutes and not get any work done.
We’ll be doing work on board ships and it is common that the Chief Officer will have his calculations completely done, ask us what our figures are – and we are still waiting for our laptops to boot up!
Oliver G. who commented above is a friend of mine who knows his stuff. I’ll go with AVG if and when I switch.
Mcafee automatically upgraded 3 machines to it’s latest version about 2 weeks ago. It populated three machines all running XP and MSN 9.0. Ever since I’ve been unable to send e-mails. I’ve spent significant time with Mcafee’s chat room and MSN support. Uninstalled, reinstalled, renamed files etc. No matter what I do the problem returns. Uninstalled Mcafee and reinstalled MSN and the problem is still there so something permanent was done by Mcafee. Has anyone experienced this problem and found a solution to fix it.
Dick Ddrew
Dick, I had the same problem getting emails to send with Outlook and XP. I disabled the scanning of outgoing emails as a temporary work around. Emails are flowing. I am at work an not at my machine with McAfee on it. I’ll take a look at my machine at home sometime this evening, figure out how I actually did it and post the steps I used back here.
They changed the control panel interface around, I’m guessing to make it more intuitive for folks who aren’t very computer savvy. However those of us long time customers who were used to working with the old control panel are left in the lurch with no apparent documentation of the changes.
Like you said it’s been over two weeks and they still haven’t fixed these problems. They are going to be loosing customers big time if they don’t get a handle on this quickly.
Yes.. I was also a big fan of Mcafee, both Virus Scan and Anti-Spyware, however, this upgrade.. and the inability to go back to the old virus scan version, has me up in arms
Luckily my year subscription is up in Nov, problem is finding another Virus Scan software to use that isn’t NORTON
My problems don’t affect the email portion, since the computers I’m running don’t use those, I’m having trouble with Intermittant loss of the microsoft Windows Network, in some cases, it stops working completely, then AOL takes forever to load up, and in some cases, fails to find the proper Internet connections. I’ve check all of mcafee’s settings, on a working machine to a non-working machine, and find all settings are identical
Mcaffe has lost me unless they really get on the ball and fix these issues
EddieG, I don’t have any idea what to tell you about AOL compatibility. I steered clear of that whole mess years ago and have never used their service. One of the reasons that I never used it in the fist place is because their software was known to cause problems with so many other applications.
Not that I’m defending McAfee on this one though…
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I just renewed my subscription to McAfee and am canceling anyway. All of the problems with their system are not worth the ulcers they are causing me. I hope the majority of their subscribers dumps them. You would think that with all of the headaches they are causing you would be able to get help from them without having to pay per min.
Two weeks ago I upgraded to McAfee Version 11. Two days everything seemed OK. Then I received a message that there was a problem with the firewall. Repair did not work. There was a unrepairable problem, the program said. Now the result is that the McAfee Security Centre has disabled the firewall service and also says that my computer is completely safe. McAfee Version 11 is certainly not stable!
Rick, I’ve abandoned McAfee at this point. I am using the AVG free version recommended above and it seems to be working well. I’ve also installed a wireless router in the interim and am using it’s firewall instead of McAfee’s. No problems thus far after a couple of months.
I too have had to disable outgoing mail-scanning… (using Windows XP) but that’s not a big problem… what’s got me irked now is over the last week McAffee keeps saying it needs me to restart the computer… and I have… again and again and again and again… about 3 times a day for the past week. Downloaded some patch from the McAfee site but this didn’t fix anything. I guess they are trying to trim down their subscriber base… if so… this is a good way to do it.