Official Luthiers Forum!

I recently upgraded my McAfee software, and ever since my computer has been dead-dog slow. More often than not, the CPU usage is at 100% or close to it.
To make matters worse, buying the software doesn't insure that it will work right, and technical support is now a pay-per-minute deal. I've been trying to do the free online chat thing, but nobody seens to be taking up my cause there. I just get a stream of:
"All agents are currently busy. Please stand by."
and
"An agent will be with you in a moment. Thank you for your patience."
and
"The next available Agent will be with you in a moment."

So do I give up and uninstall this software so I can use my computer without everything locking up, or pay the big bucks to get help?
It's ridiculous.
All this computer stuff is making me cranky.
I think Dell and McAfee are in cahoots to make my life miserable......

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I've been using AVGfree for a couple years, and it does great, doesn't cost a dime (if it's for non-commercial home use).

link

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

Hesh,

We're running a P4 3.0 GHz, 512 MB Ram
Windows XP Home Edition V2002 SP2

I had an older version of McAfee on there, and then installed their newest version a few days ago, which seems to be when the problems began. The new version doesn't have the ease of use that the old version had. Very confusing. Maybe I'm getting old before my time!

I removed McAfee and it seems to run fine now. There was also a process that was going wild and I ended it, which seemed to help too. God only knows what it was.
Yeah, I know....risky!

I'll try reinstalling and see what happens.

Oh...we have, Virus Scan, Security Center, Personal Firewall Plus, and SpamKiller.
I'm only going to reinstall Virus Scan and the firewall for now.

Don Williams38935.9551851852

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I'll second Jon's remarks. I have the free version of AVG installed on all my home computers. I also use the free version of Zone Alarm as a firewall -- necessary if you have an "always-on" broadband connection.

I've been very happy with both.

Also, you might want to think about getting a copy of Spybot and Adaware, both which offer free versions, to keep spyware off your 'puter.

I recently had a problem with my daughter's machine pegging the usage meter when I was working on it and trying to shut down Yahoo chat. It doesn't like to be shut down apparently. I had to do the ctl-alt-del thing (in XP) and end the routine(s) that were causing this.

Best,

Michael

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Live to Play, Play to Live

McAfee, yeah, I ordered in a new Dell for my sister. 56K dialup. Then each module that came up had to do a major update. If you ask me, I think it downloaded fresh copies of each module, very timeconsuming. But it worked. It is a Dell dual core with Media xp software 05, something like that. It is working great.

Sorry Don, sometimes upgrades are just the pits.

Well, I uninstalled the McAfee, then went to their website and downloaded it again. Now it's working fine. Before it wasn't asking if I wanted to allow other software to connect to the internet, now it is. I guess that means it's working at least better than before. I would run my UPS software and it would lock up the computer trying to gain access to the internet. That wasn't a good thing...

Thanks to all!

That relieved a little stress!

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don, I am happy you have things solved!

I'm a little late on the post yet would like to add the following.

I have McAfee/both desktops and Norton/laptop. Both are a pain, but I went through the same problem as you with McAfee's about 10 days ago. CPU usage at 100 and continuous program lockups.

While downloading McAfee's new Suite 8 update my Dell froze. I had lost most aspects of McAfee except for two files that I had to manually remove.

After 10 minutes (yes 10 minutes from start to finish) online with McAfee via my laptop I had the info I needed to completely remove all McAfee and download anew since remove/change wasn't the answer.

It seems McAfee's just isn't compatable with other anti-spyware. However,I kept my Spy Sweep as it catches what McAfee's still misses!

Trend Micro Pc-cillin. Only way to go...

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Dave Bland

remember...

"If it doesn't play in tune...it's just pretty wood"

yOU GUYS ARE TOO FOR ME!

I'll 2nd the vote for spybot and adaware. My computer slowed to a crawl last week. Nothing in a virus check or spybot, but adaware found 12 items. I removed those and it ran like a champ.

Ron (wish I was more )old man38936.4038194444

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

Being a sysadmin for a major university I work with the Mcafee Enterprise Edition virus scan on a daily basis. The Mcafee products are excellent, but require some tweaking to run well. Check to see if you have 'on access scan' enabled, if this is enabled, then Mcafee will run a virus check anytime you access any file on your system, even system files. On older machines, this can really cause slow downs and hang ups. You can turn this off, as long as you do a manual scan on a regular basis. Also, Mcafee has powerful port blocking tools, which if not configured correctly can limit your ability to do things on the internet, such as using ftp and other services. The best anti-virus suites offer many options, so it can be difficult for people sometimes to set them up correctly. If you have questions, feel free to contact me.

I had heaps of problems with Mcaffee, switched to PC-cillin never looked back.

I have used computers and virus checkers/firewall for many years, and the very best firewall I have EVER used is AVG free edition. The great thing about this program, it's so unobtrusive except when it does automatic updates. It doesn't slow the system either. I have NEVER had any viruses with this program, however with Mcafee...

I used Mcafee myself and it is DEAD slow.

If combined with an office cleaner like Secretmaker, the results are disasterous (WARNING, don't EVER use Secretmaker...so many bugs it causes your PC to automatically shut down to save the hard drive from meltdown)

Panda ain't bad either.

Well, I have my subscription with McAfee paid through the end of the year, so when it's up perhaps I'll try that AVG product or the PC-cillin.
Right now, it's doing fine. I'm guessing it never installed properly the first time.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."