McAfee Total Protection uses 100% resources constantly. Any suggestions on alte

[prouddad2]

Hi. I recently purchased and installed McAfee Total Protection. Since then, my computer runs at 100% system resources almost all the time. Even if I disable the "scan always" option and the full time update option, 100% resources is almost always used. I contacted McAfee, and, except for uninstalling and then reinstalling (their default 'solution' for any problem) they could not help. In fact, after being on the phone and on-line for over 3 hours, the best they could say was "this is a known problem and our tech support department is working on a fix that should be ready in 2 weeks" (of course why they couldn't have said that at the beginning is one of those mysteries of life).

Does anyone have a suggestion, including alternative programs that will do what McAfee does, without taking over my computer? I run XP Pro with 2.5gb of RAM.

Thanks

 

[djg9205]

Working at a computer repair shop, I can tell you that we get customers with your exact problem all the time. They purchase these "full protection" suites and then find out their computer has gotten exponentially slower because the antivirus is hogging all the resources. And simply turning off the program does little to nothing to fix that. Norton and McAfee are among the worst in this area. We NEVER, under ANY circumstances recommened Norton or McAfee to anyone. There are many programs out there that provide perfectly sufficient antivirus functionality, and don't put such a burden on the computer. We tend to recommend Panda Cloud Antivirus, Avast, Trend Micro, or Microsoft Security Essentials. I belive all of those listed are FREE with the exception of Trend Micro as well.

Many people are somehow convinced that the more expensive the program, and the bigger it's control panel, the more protection they will have. This is simply not true. Panda Cloud, for example, has one of the most minimilast control panels you will ever see and yet is right up there with all the others in detect rates and scan speed.

For a detailed analysis of all mainstream Antivirus programs, go to www.av-comparitives.org. There you will find reports from every few months ranking all of these programs on many different things.

 

[Zoron]

I despise McAfee... always have, always will. Their corporate products are better, but their home products are atrocious at best. Norton is even a much better product than McAfee. I currently used Trend Micro Internet Security, but I also like Panda. I haven't tried any of the newest Norton products, but I have heard they are much improved over previous versions. One free one that I've checked out (though only briefly) was Comodo Internet Security... I have it running on a friend's computer. It was very highly rated at this website:

http://www.matousec.com/projects/proactive-security-challenge/results.php#products-ratings

I was surprised at how poorly some of the biggest names did on those tests... but keep in mind that these are security and stability tests... not necessarily anti-virus tests. I haven't had any issues with the products I use, even though they did very poorly on those tests.

 

[prouddad2]

Djg and Zoron, thank you both for your quick and useful replies. I will try one or more of the apps you recommended, and then, as quickly as possible, uninstall McAfee (and get a refund)!!

Regards,
prouddad2

 

[hasan516]

May I also recommend Kaspersky Antivirus 2010.

I know that this program you have to buy, and I also used to use Norton and McAffee and had the same problem.

The nice thing about Kaspersky, is that it runs in the background.

I have never EVER experienced my computer slow down while using. EVER.

It has an easy to use interface and scans and removes every time of virus.
It does hourly or daily-depending on your choice- of virus databases so it can stay on top.
It also has a feature called Gaming Proflie where if youre playing games it will not do anything to take up much CPU and bandwitdth.

I recommend this product to you.

 

[djg9205]

Djg and Zoron, thank you both for your quick and useful replies. I will try one or more of the apps you recommended, and then, as quickly as possible, uninstall McAfee (and get a refund)!!

Regards,
prouddad2

Good luck uninstalling. Another thing Norton and McAfee are notorious for is being almost impossible to completely uninstall. Look for a McAfee removal tool like the one provided here or maybe even use Revo Uninstaller to ensure that every trace of it is gone. Also make sure you disable to active antivirus component of McAfee and close it as much as you can before downloading and running the McAfee removal tool. Otherwise, McAfee will detect the McAfee removal tool as a "virus" and try to delete it lol.

 

[soundguruman]

The three most effective security systems are:
1. Panda Internet Security 90% proactive, 98% anti rootkit
2. Norton 360 68% proactive, 98% anti rootkit
3. Kaspersky 74% proactive, 30% anti rootkit

This is the advantage to using other systems like Mc afee:
68% proactive, 30% anti rootkit

and the top two use less memory and system resources due to the 360 system.

The most fun one is a Ransomware program called AntiVirus. It holds your computer hostage after you install it for free, trying to get $5 per program when you open Internet Explorer and other applications. This joins the dozens of fake scan and antivirus programs offered on the internet.

So because I can buy either of the top two for $20 or less, three license version, it becomes worth while.

 

[mibix19]

As djg9205 says, makesure you uninstall properly and fully. Dont panic .