Lost Internet Connection after McAfee Update

I'd suggest going over to the McAfee site and checking out the specific instructions it has.

McAfee Support Site Link

I read over the instructions for internet security suite 2008 for a few minutes and found one small thing to check. It says on page 13 that there is a way on the program to download but not install updates. Maybe thats what your machine is doing, but it also said there were other ways to change the program.

If I read your post wrong and you have total internet connection problems after updating a program there is one other thing you could check.
If you have a router, sometimes they can be set to block certain programs so you might want to take a look at that also.

Hope some of this helped.  

When I downloaded the updates, they were also installed.

I should have also stated that I have a 2Wire, DSL Modem/router combination unit. The desktop experiencing the problem is connected to the router via cable. I have two laptops connected wirelessly. When the desktop fails to connect to the Internet, the two wireless connections work fine. The wireless connections have never failed to operate properly.

During one of the times that the desktop would not connect to the Internet, I removed the wireless PCMCIA card from my old laptop and connected it to the router with the same cable used on the desktop and it worked fine.

Another noteworthy point is that when the desktop failed to connect to the Internet, the way I corrected it was to reboot. Sometimes it would take 2 reboots, sometimes 10 or 20 reboots before I could connect to the Internet. Since I stopped updating McAfee, I have had no trouble connecting to the Internet with the desktop.

My McAfee subscription is about to expire and I do not want to go without virus and spyware protection. I would like to buy McAfee or one of the other Internet Security suites, but do not want to have the same Internet connection problem I previously had.

If the connection isn't working and you need to reboot to make it work then double check the router and make sure they aren't set to only allow specific IP addresses to connect to the internet.

If your computer uses DHCP then most likely its getting a random ip from the router each time it boots up. The router might be set to only allow certain IPs through and that means, if you booted up your other 2 laptops first then they would have the 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2 and maybe those two IPs are the only ones your router lets connect so you need to tell the router to let 192.186.0.3 to get through also then 3 computers can connect at same time.
 

It is a curious problem that it is only the desktop affected, and it is connected directly via ethernet cable.

If you believe the security suite might be a cause of intermittent connection loss I would look there first.

Did you completely remove / uninstall Norton AV? Did you use their removal tool to remove all instances? i.e Files, services, registry entries... etc?

Norton is terrible for remaining active on the OS after an uninstall.

If not run their removal tool, I have linked it below:

http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/doci...

Ensure you use the correct version.

Mcafee aren't innocent also of having very tricky products to remove, here is a link to help you after you uninstall any of their products to get rid of the remaining junk http://majorgeeks.com/McAfee_Consumer_Product_Removal_T... (Mcafee are the author, this is their own tool)

Another possibility might be as Geef suggests, some kind of IP addressing conflict. My recommendation would be to set up static IP's for each of the three pcs so that they are automatically assigned their own IP address.

Here is a guide on how this is done:

http://www.portforward.com/networking/staticip.htm

If after setting up static IP's connection problems still exist, it is very easy to revert back to dynamically assigned ips.

Hello, I had this same problem and on a quick Internet search found this forum. I contacted McAfee Consumer Support for a chat via their website (no charge). The Consumer Support Representative gave me this fix to enable Windows file sharing (NETBIOS). It worked for me:

NOTE: you must do this on each computer on your network.



1. Please right click "M" icon in the right bottom side, near to the system time and select the option named "Change Settings".
2. Click on "Internet & Network" in the left pane and click on "Advanced" under "Firewall Protection is enabled" tab.
3. Click on System services in the left pane.
4. Put check mark on "Windows file sharing (NETBIOS)".
5. Click on Ok.
6. Restart the computer.

I was *very* impressed with this service, it took about 30 minutes from start to finish.
Hope this works for you