Windows 7 Beta + McAfee = Bad News

News
By Kevin Parrish
published

Consumers downloading and test-driving the new Windows 7 beta are experiencing troubles when attempting to run McAfee Total Protection

According to this blog, PCs with Windows 7 Beta installed will not be able to run McAfee Total Protection or McAfee Antivirus... at least not at the moment. While the blog entry gave no specifics, the McAfee installer pops up with a warning, saying that the program does not support "the version of Windows installed on this machine." The installer then promptly refers the installer to the product documentation for a list of supported operating systems.

After a difficult launch, Microsoft was able to patch its download servers and offer the Windows 7 beta by Saturday afternoon after consumers overloaded the Microsoft pipelines. While no immediate complaints have popped up other than the McAfee installation problem, Windows 7 has already racked in mixed reviews, some claiming that the operating system is nothing more than a glorified service pack of the blandly-received Windows Vista, while others believe that Windows 7 is the operating system that Vista meant to be (but fell short).

Still, users of Internet Explorer 8 beta - now integrated into Windows 7 beta - should have seen the compatibility issue coming in regards to McAfee, as the antivirus program is one of many not working in harmony with Microsoft's latest browser. Strangely enough, and as pointed out by the blog, McAfee's browser-based Site Advisor Plus actually does work with both Windows 7 beta and Internet Explorer 8 Beta.

Hopefully, Microsoft and McAfee can iron out the incompatibility bugs before the Windows 7 Beta expires on August 1.

Kevin Parrish
18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • cappster
    McAfee is a terrible anti virus solution. People are better off not using it at all.
    Reply
  • ricardok
    I don't think McAfee is a good solution for any computer in the market. Avast is light and does a great job, and works on Windows 7 without hiccups.

    Apart from McAfee, I can't seem to be able to install ANY Nokia programs (PC Suite and the Nokia Software Updater) due to the same problem with the invalid windows version.

    Programs such as BSPlayer do have issues but can be worked out.
    Most of the time I can set up the compatibility mode but programs that don't recognize Windows 7 as being the correct version gives out some errors (0xc0000005 is the most common error) when set to run on compatibility mode.
    Reply
  • McAfee + Anything = Bad news
    Reply
  • igimax
    Hi :)

    I don't think McAfee is a good solution too! But in my tests Avira Antivir is more powerful than others products. I'm thinking, If you guys give it a chance and test it! maybe you love it like me! ;)

    It's Free and you can download it from here: http://www.free-av.com/

    Good Luck
    IgImAx
    :-b =;
    Reply
  • Windows 7 Beta 1 Build 7000 + McAfee 8.7i Entreprise work like charm. Updates are OK too.
    Reply
  • I do tech support for about 4000 students, all of whom have symantec or McAfee. When they come in completely infected w/ viruses, the first thing we do is kill them in msconfig, then use a combo of (avast, spybot, ccleaner, nod32 online, bitdefender online) to fix the problem. Then, when everything is cleaned up we go and turn their crappo software back on : /
    Reply
  • T-Bone
    Been using McAfee for years & never had a problem. McAfee is light compared with Norton's which I think really sucks. Avira is also good but not as robust as McAfee especially when it comes to spyware/malware & email etc.
    Reply
  • T-Bone
    Been using McAfee for years & never had a problem. McAfee is light compared with Norton's which I think really sucks. Avira is also good but not as robust as McAfee when it comes to spyware/malware & email etc.
    Reply
  • trevorvdw
    I think they made a typo on the title of the article. Should read McAfee = Bad News
    Reply
  • if McAfee's installer (written by McAfee's developers) says it won't run on 7, that's most likely because the installer is checking the windows version number against the version number the installer is designed to run on, and erroring out because they don't match.

    My gut reaction is that this has nothing to do with how well 7 works or how well McAfee works, and everything to do with the fact that it's an XP/Vista installer that is refusing to run an on unexpected version of windows.

    C'mon tomshardware....
    Reply