McAfee

[shempmcgurk]

For several years I had the entire Norton secuity system installed on
my computer and I removed it because it made everything work slower.

Then I had the free AVG anti-virus program on but was afraid that it
was letting certain things in.

So, recently, I put on the entire McAfee plan which was free from my
high-speed internet provider. But things seem a little slower with
it, but only at times, such as when I have several Internet Explorer
windows open and many tabs open on, as well as several programs
running.

In your experience, is this slowness due to McAfee? It's not as bad
as with Norton...but it is slower than if I didn't have McAfee at all.

Any solutions to this slowness?

 

[Daave]

For several years I had the entire Norton secuity system installed on
my computer and I removed it because it made everything work slower.

Then I had the free AVG anti-virus program on but was afraid that it
was letting certain things in.

So, recently, I put on the entire McAfee plan which was free from my
high-speed internet provider. But things seem a little slower with
it, but only at times, such as when I have several Internet Explorer
windows open and many tabs open on, as well as several programs
running.

In your experience, is this slowness due to McAfee? It's not as bad
as with Norton...but it is slower than if I didn't have McAfee at all.

Any solutions to this slowness?

Both McAfee and Norton use lots of resources, often resulting in
sluggishness. I would never use either one of them.

Slowness generally occurs because of one or more of the following:

1. Malware
2. Resource-hungry programs like McAfee or Norton (ironically!)
3. Not enough RAM, resulting in over-dependence on the page file (often
because of too many programs running at once, and many of these run
automatically each time you boot up--even if you don't intend to run
them!)
4. Hard drive access mode is inadvertantly changed to PIO mode.

These links should keep you busy.

http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Viruses_Malware

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

For several years I had the entire Norton secuity system installed on
my computer and I removed it because it made everything work slower.

Then I had the free AVG anti-virus program on but was afraid that it
was letting certain things in.

So, recently, I put on the entire McAfee plan which was free from my
high-speed internet provider. But things seem a little slower with
it, but only at times, such as when I have several Internet Explorer
windows open and many tabs open on, as well as several programs
running.

In your experience, is this slowness due to McAfee? It's not as bad
as with Norton...but it is slower than if I didn't have McAfee at all.

Any solutions to this slowness?

AVG 8.0 is ok, a better bet than either Norton or McAfee..


--
Mike Hall - MVP
How to construct a good post..
http://dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
How to use the Microsoft Product Support Newsgroups..
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=newswhelp&style=toc
Mike's Window - My Blog..
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/default.aspx

 

[bojimbo26one]

For several years I had the entire Norton secuity system installed on
my computer and I removed it because it made everything work slower.

Then I had the free AVG anti-virus program on but was afraid that it
was letting certain things in.

So, recently, I put on the entire McAfee plan which was free from my
high-speed internet provider. But things seem a little slower with
it, but only at times, such as when I have several Internet Explorer
windows open and many tabs open on, as well as several programs
running.

In your experience, is this slowness due to McAfee? It's not as bad
as with Norton...but it is slower than if I didn't have McAfee at all.

Any solutions to this slowness?

One that I have is free Avast which gives audio and visual warning .

 

[Twayne]

For several years I had the entire Norton secuity system installed on

my computer and I removed it because it made everything work slower.

Then I had the free AVG anti-virus program on but was afraid that it
was letting certain things in.

So, recently, I put on the entire McAfee plan which was free from my
high-speed internet provider. But things seem a little slower with
it, but only at times, such as when I have several Internet Explorer
windows open and many tabs open on, as well as several programs
running.

In your experience, is this slowness due to McAfee? It's not as bad
as with Norton...but it is slower than if I didn't have McAfee at all.

Any solutions to this slowness?

Yes, it may be due to McAfee, but unless it happened RIGHT AFTER you
installed McAfee, you might want to look into other areas. Or:
Uninstall McAfee according to their uninstall instructions and find out;
it's easy enough to do.

Both Norton and McAfee default to aggressive scanning options, so on
less than reasonably fast machines, they do cause slowdown periods at
different times, but NOT all the time.
Norton will cause additional slowdowns if you use its _GoBack disk_
disk monitoring feature too, although the worst of that is during boot
while it sets itself up. If you don't have imaging software, GoBack is
a great choice; you can back up to anything from a few minutes ago to a
week or so ago. But at the same time it has about 12% of your disk
space reserved for it by default; too much for most cases IMO.

AVG and AVAST are good secondary choices and not nearly so aggressive.

However if you've invested money in Norton or McAfee, it's worth your
time & effort to RTFM and learn what they do and when. Depending on
your situation, and that's most people, the aggressive defaults should
be modified to be more amenable to the way you use your computer. IMO
it's silly to be scanning files every time one is opened, created,
closed, moved, deleted or copied around the system, scanning outgoing
e-mails and many other things like those. Getting those set to match
your own methods almost always does completely away with the slowdowns.
So IMO it boils down to, if you're going to spend good money to buy a
license to a good AV+ program, it's worth learning what that app does
and whether it matches your own needs. If not, make it so. Or recoup
your cash.

HTH

 

[Twayne]

I agree. McAfee and Norton are some of the worst products out there.
Though I also moved over to AVG 8 with no problems...
another good *free* AV program is Avast

True, AVG and AVAST are good alternatives, especially for slower
computers and since they're free. But Norton and McAfee are far from
"some of the worst products out there." Just the opposite, in fact.

But you cannot beat Norton of McAfee if you bother to learn what the
programs do and how to use them. I'm a little upset right now with AVG
because a virus/worm/trojan/whatever did get stopped here on this
machine by Norton, but then blew right on by me and did not get stopped
at the AVG protected machine just behind me. Up until recently I was of
the opinion that AVG at least kept abreast of the latest threats and
older ones too, but not so for this one as I just found out a couple
hours ago. I heard it beep, but assumed it was just another one of
those constant "updates" from AVG, but it wasn't as I found out. It was
easy to remove and about two months in the wild per Symantec, so IMO AVG
should have caught it!
But that doesn't mean I'm throwing AVG out the window as you and some
of your fellow MVP parrots like to do with Norton and McAfee for no
valid reasons other than the company line. The other machine has AVAST
on it and doesn't seem to have been bothered since it was in hibernation
at the time. It did wake up for some reason "wake on lan"? but nothing
got into it. It's SO many logs to check; gotta automate that one!

But you aren't doing anyone any favors when you out of hand summarily
dismiss any application for no given reasons and no good reason besides.
Closed minds just stagnate so I know what your reponse will be; don't
bother, I don't intend to debate with a closed mind.

Regards,

Twayne

 

[Daave]

True, AVG and AVAST are good alternatives, especially for slower
computers and since they're free. But Norton and McAfee are far from
"some of the worst products out there." Just the opposite, in fact.

But you cannot beat Norton of McAfee if you bother to learn what the
programs do and how to use them. I'm a little upset right now with
AVG because a virus/worm/trojan/whatever did get stopped here on this
machine by Norton, but then blew right on by me and did not get
stopped at the AVG protected machine just behind me. Up until
recently I was of the opinion that AVG at least kept abreast of the
latest threats and older ones too, but not so for this one as I just
found out a couple hours ago. I heard it beep, but assumed it was
just another one of those constant "updates" from AVG, but it wasn't
as I found out. It was easy to remove and about two months in the
wild per Symantec, so IMO AVG should have caught it!
But that doesn't mean I'm throwing AVG out the window as you and
some of your fellow MVP parrots like to do with Norton and McAfee for
no valid reasons other than the company line. The other machine has
AVAST on it and doesn't seem to have been bothered since it was in
hibernation at the time. It did wake up for some reason "wake on
lan"? but nothing got into it. It's SO many logs to check; gotta
automate that one!
But you aren't doing anyone any favors when you out of hand summarily
dismiss any application for no given reasons and no good reason
besides. Closed minds just stagnate so I know what your reponse will
be; don't bother, I don't intend to debate with a closed mind.

Closed mind? There's plenty of evidence supporting the proposition that
Norton and McAfee are bloated applications that significantly decrease a
PC's performance (just look at the original post of this thread!). I
will grant that the *corporate* versions of these products are
worthwhile, however.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

True, AVG and AVAST are good alternatives, especially for slower computers
and since they're free. But Norton and McAfee are far from "some of the
worst products out there." Just the opposite, in fact.

But you cannot beat Norton of McAfee if you bother to learn what the
programs do and how to use them. I'm a little upset right now with AVG
because a virus/worm/trojan/whatever did get stopped here on this machine
by Norton, but then blew right on by me and did not get stopped at the AVG
protected machine just behind me. Up until recently I was of the opinion
that AVG at least kept abreast of the latest threats and older ones too,
but not so for this one as I just found out a couple hours ago. I heard
it beep, but assumed it was just another one of those constant "updates"
from AVG, but it wasn't as I found out. It was easy to remove and about
two months in the wild per Symantec, so IMO AVG should have caught it!
But that doesn't mean I'm throwing AVG out the window as you and some of
your fellow MVP parrots like to do with Norton and McAfee for no valid
reasons other than the company line. The other machine has AVAST on it
and doesn't seem to have been bothered since it was in hibernation at the
time. It did wake up for some reason "wake on lan"? but nothing got into
it. It's SO many logs to check; gotta automate that one!

But you aren't doing anyone any favors when you out of hand summarily
dismiss any application for no given reasons and no good reason besides.
Closed minds just stagnate so I know what your reponse will be; don't
bother, I don't intend to debate with a closed mind.

Regards,

Twayne

Norton and McAfee morphed from nice fast av's into leviathan which root
themselves into the OS, slowing it down.

Unfortunately, the rest of the field look to be heading the same way..


--
Mike Hall - MVP
How to construct a good post..
http://dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
How to use the Microsoft Product Support Newsgroups..
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=newswhelp&style=toc
Mike's Window - My Blog..
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/default.aspx