Is Spybot sabotaging McAfee?

[John Brock]

I recently loaded McAfee VirusScan 8.0 on a PC. It seemed to work
fine, and in fact caught some stuff that neither Ad-aware nor Spybot
noticed. However at some point I did something which disabled the
"Manage Quarantined Files" function. When I tried to use it I got
a panel which said:

! An error has occurred in the script on this page.

Line: 79
Char: 2
Error: Object doesn't support this property or method:
'gobjQTColl.put_ColProperty'
Code: 0
URL: mcp://c:\PROGRA~1
\mcfee.com\vso\vsoui.dll::qtmanage.htm

Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?

Yes No

Whether I said Yes or No didn't matter: the page did not display
properly. The first time this happened I uninstalled and reinstalled
VirusScan, and the problem went away. But I tried again just now
and the problem is back. The only thing I have done between then
and now is run Spybot and click on the Immunize function, because
I was posting something here regarding Spybot and Immunize and I
wanted to see the messages it gave me.

So does anyone know what is going on? I have a feeling that Spybot
did something which messed up McAfee, but maybe it's something
else.

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Quoth the raven John Brock:

I recently loaded McAfee VirusScan 8.0 on a PC. It seemed to work
fine, and in fact caught some stuff that neither Ad-aware nor
Spybot noticed.

Addressing this one point: Neither AdAware nor Spybot are anti-virus
applications, and as such, will not find the same things as McAfee.
And the reverse is true as well; McAfee will not find the adware and
other malware that the others are designed to find.

There is no be-one-be-all program.

 

[Blevins]

McAfee will not find the adware and other
malware that the others are designed to find.

Wrong. McAfee now scans for spyware.

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Quoth the raven Blevins:

Wrong. McAfee now scans for spyware.

Would that be this $70 product?

http://us.mcafee.com/root/package.asp?pkgid=144&cid=10353

Spyware/Adware Protection
Helps enhance your privacy by rooting out snooper programs that
attempt to track your Web surfing habits. Now you can easily find and
shut down these tracking programs that often piggyback on popular
freeware utilities and games.


Does anyone know if it finds all the thousands of items the other two
programs will find?

 

[John Brock]

Quoth the raven Blevins:

Would that be this $70 product?

http://us.mcafee.com/root/package.asp?pkgid=144&cid=10353

Spyware/Adware Protection
Helps enhance your privacy by rooting out snooper programs that
attempt to track your Web surfing habits. Now you can easily find and
shut down these tracking programs that often piggyback on popular
freeware utilities and games.


Does anyone know if it finds all the thousands of items the other two
programs will find?

The first time I ran McAfee VirusScan I stupidly did it before
downloading the most recent signature files. It found one thing:
an old version of Dialer-RAJ. Then I ran Ad-aware and Spybot, and
they found a whole bunch of things. Then I updated McAfee, and
during the scheduled overnight scan it found 6 more problems, which
looked to me like spyware rather than viruses.

I think the McAfee people are competent, and that eventually they
will get their asses in gear and do a good job looking for spyware.
They are probably not there yet, but neither is their product
useless for this purpose.

 

[John Brock]

False alarm. Apparently the flakiness is in McAfee itself. The
Quarantine problem seems to show up after rebooting with background
virus protection turned off (it's an old, slow computer, and having
VirusScan running in the background just slows things down too
much). Enabling VirusScan fixes the problem, even after I disable
it again. But clicking Immunize on Spybot does *not* cause the
problem.

 

[Criminal Element]

Wrong. McAfee now scans for spyware.

Even if true it doesnt make what he said "wrong". Many spyware scanners are only
for adware/spyware and not malware/spyware so saying it scans for spyware
won't really mean adware will be found either, no?

 

[Ionizer]

Quoth the raven Blevins:


Would that be this $70 product?

http://us.mcafee.com/root/package.asp?pkgid=144&cid=10353

Spyware/Adware Protection
Helps enhance your privacy by rooting out snooper programs that
attempt to track your Web surfing habits. Now you can easily find and
shut down these tracking programs that often piggyback on popular
freeware utilities and games.


Does anyone know if it finds all the thousands of items the other two
programs will find?

Specifically, it's this $39.99 program:
http://us.mcafee.com/root/package.asp?pkgid=182 I've got it installed and
updated- its current signature file claims to be able to detect: 335
programs, 1270 files and 2,386 registry keys. It doesn't scan for
tracking cookies like AdAware and, I assume, SpyBot S&D do.

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Quoth the raven Ionizer:

Specifically, it's this $39.99 program:
http://us.mcafee.com/root/package.asp?pkgid=182 I've got it
installed and updated- its current signature file claims to be able
to detect: 335 programs, 1270 files and 2,386 registry keys. It
doesn't scan for tracking cookies like AdAware and, I assume,
SpyBot S&D do.

Ah, a separate program. The sales pitch reads like any other
anti-spyware program. <g> But I do see that it comes with "One Year of
Automatic Updates." What happens then? Buy again?