Farewell McAfee

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I have used McAfee VirusScan since Windows 95. I still have it installed on all my machines; depending on their age and Windows version, it's v7.1, or v8.0, and v8.5 on one system.

Yesterday I noticed on one machine that the virus definitions hadn't been updated since March 31. So I downloaded the manual update, which would present me with a long-winded error message. Googling that message I found that McAfee does no longer support or update VirusScan versions older than 8.5!

Well, that's it then. I have started uninstalling McAfee on all machines, and while I'm at it, also get rid of Windows Defender. (Hello, Andsome!)

I will be going for the free AVG version, which just completed its installation on one of the machines. Seems a lot less heavy than McAfee, which took about half an hour to update every day (without actually updating anything since April 1st).

Well, that's it - farewell McAfee!

[-pops-]

I'm still quite happy with Drive Sentry.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Thanks for the Drive Sentry tip -pops-

I had some serious trouble with the AVG install on one of my Japanese systems. It changed the Japanese Input Method style on the keyboard from Romaji to direct Kana input, which is almost unusable. It also changed the whole IME environment from Japanese to English, and finally all Japanese messages, as well as the Office Shortcut Bar, just displayed question marks '?????????????????????????????????????'.

I uninstalled AVG and did a System Restore, and all is back to normal. But I will need a different Antivirus solution, so I will look into Drive Sentry (tomorrow).

P.S. just before you ask, the AVG installer was the multi-language version, which I installed in Japanese (of course).

[AlanHo]

Why not try Microsoft Security Essentials - free - effective - fast update - fast system scan - low resource hog.

I have used it for a few months and cannot find fault.

As a double/treble check I have done the occasional check with other on-line scanners and they have always come up clean.

Both our desktops and my laptop all use it - plus the Windows firewall - as the only means of defence. MSE has reported a number of malware interceptions and none have so far got through.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Thank you Allen; I have installed Security Essentials on a friend's computer, whom I have helped to buy a new system earlier this year. It seems to work very nicely.

However, I would like to have a similar security setup on all my computers, some of which are still on Windows 2000 - not part of the system requirements for SE. Not part of the system requirements for many things these days!

[Boris]

Pat,

For your Win 2k boxes you can try this :-
/>http://www.pctools.com/free-antivirus/

Has been fine for the older machines I have installed it on.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Thanks, Boris - I will look at it.

[D4\/!d]

Why not try Microsoft Security Essentials - free - effective - fast update - fast system scan - low resource hog.

I have used it for a few months and cannot find fault.

Same here. I recommend MSE.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I have now installed MSE on two systems - very effective!

I will go and install it on a friend's computer tomorrow.

[-pops-]

After several years of extolling the virtues of Drive Sentry, I've become very, very disillusioned with it.

It had been playing the fool with me for several days on an XP machine telling me it needed updating but refusing to allow me to do that. I tolerated that for a while as the machine is only used occasionally.

This morning, on a W7 machine, Drive Sentry announces that my trial period is ended and it is closing down. Whilst doing this, it froze all access to the machine via keyboard or mouse/touchpad. Note: have have paid all the due fees for it. Nothing I could do would allow it to function correctly and, having more important things to do than fanny about with errant software, I removed it and installed the MSE program.

So, good bye Drive Sentry!

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Looks like a lot of computer security companies are losing customers...

This weekend I am going to the house of a friend, to uninstall her Norton software, which she had been paying [for] for many years. From her description it refuses to update the virus definitions. It does download them every day, but does not actually update itself. The downloaded updates cannot be deleted, and her HD is becoming full, and the computer has slowed down so much that it is almost unusable. It's time to get rid of Norton!

I don't understand what these companies are doing? Now Microsoft has a free antivirus tool, which seems to function amazingly well. One should think that the competitors would do everything in their power to keep their current, paying customers. But is seems that they do everything in their power to get rid of them!

In this thread alone, first McAfee deciding to no longer support customers who do not have the latest software version installed. Then -pops- with a software that he praised just a few days ago, turning on him in such an appalling way. And Norton - well, nothing new here at least; they always had terrible software.

In the past 15 years Microsoft has often been painted as playing very unfairly with competitors. It seems that this time they just turned out one good piece of software, and the competitors just doing themselves in, one after the other...

[andsome]

I wish you the very best of luck in getting rid of Norton. I have reported on here before now as to the problems that I had. Even with e mail help from one of their technical bods, and several removal tools, followed by manual registry editing, I still had occasional update requests from somewhere in the depths of the computer. Eventually I reinstalled windows.

[catgate]

And Norton - well, nothing new here at least; they always had terrible software.

I think that is not quite true. In the 70s and early 80s Peter Norton had some exellent utilities.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

You mean the original Norton Utilities? I have seen them at the time; they (the box) had some picture of an arrogant looking guy in a lab coat on it - I would never have bought such a thing!

[catgate]

You mean the original Norton Utilities? I have seen them at the time; they (the box) had some picture of an arrogant looking guy in a lab coat on it - I would never have bought such a thing!

No I am thinking of some earlier that that. I think the one you are thinking about was a Box predominantly Yellow in colour and that came out after M$ had come out with W3.1.

The particular one the first impressed me was an "undelete" utility which came out pre-windws, when we were all on DOS. It allowed you to scan for deleted files and resurrect them. For it's time it was a cracker. So was a thing called "Periscope" that ran in the background and would allow you to break it out in the middle of an operation as a fault finder, but I am fairly sure that had no connection with Norton.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Yes, I meant the yellow box. W3.1 and OS/2 was my first contact with PCs; I didn't believe that they could do anything else than playing simple games before that. (I was working on mainframes before that.)

[catgate]

W3.1 and OS/2 was my first contact with PCs; I didn't believe that they could do anything else than playing simple games before that. (I was working on mainframes before that.)

Oh there were some very useful programmes, even before Bill Gates started his assault on world domination.

I regularly used GWbasic of course, along with Wordstar, Ashton-Tate's dBase (still use that occasionally), Lotus' 123 spreadsheet and a complier programe which would would convert a prog. written in basic into an .exe file. It was also possible to use the A-T. dBase to create programmes to do the most wonderful things. There was even TurboBasic which was a cross between Wordstar and GWbasic which had its own built in complier.

[Boris]

Oh there were some very useful programmes, ............. Lotus' 123 spreadsheet

I still use 123 :) ........ and WordPro