DOWN WITH McAfee! (rant)

[daveleau]

How int he heck does this company stay in business?!?

I bought GuardDog a while ago while it was still Cybermedia and found that it would not work with the McAfee Virus scanner. Ok, they're competitors. Then Net. ***. BUYS Cybermedia and slops GD in with McAfee Office WITHOUT fixing the problem?!?

My latest problem (and reason for this post) was with Nuts and Dolts. I installed it, along with Hurricane 98 and all I got was errors! Nuts and Dolts won't run effectively, it gives me errors saying that all of its components are not compatible w/ my version of Win98 (SE). I get errors in DOS during boot saying that it installed itself twice in my Sys.ini and it puts a gazillion things in my system tray, robbing me of precious resources. I like Norton because of its stability but don't install it for that very reason.

Mijenix utilities are the ONLY way to go as far as I'm concerned. No resources taken and NO PROBLEMS!!!

DOWN WITH MCAFEE! They should replace the F in the name with two S's to reflect the ability of their programs to HELP the USER!

Have I said enough?

[jman01pa]

Yep!

[bobcat]

I totally agree /forum/smile.gif

I use GD with NAV. It gives me errors when it boots. Had Nuts & Bolts...Took it 18 hrs to defrag a 3 gig HD. Norton does it in 30-40 min, same drive.

When N & D drive image was installed, on boot up...my machine would freeze up.

[SouthFla]

Oh MAN, I want to ***** here too!!

On my machine, I had McAffee virus scan pre-installed. When the "trial" period expired, I got a message saying to upgrade/update and purchase the software from McAffee's web site. The only problem was that as soon as the "expired" notification flashed on the computer screen, my computer crashed. Some "conflict" with other software, said McAffee! Ended up having to RE-FORMAT at their advice...Then it happened AGAIN! Had to go through entire Re-format two months later...

So now I'm with Norton, and couldn't be happier....Death to McAffee!!

[beck]

What are "Mijenix utilities"? Where do you get them?

Anyone else use these? Opinions about them?

[drizzle]

Here's the link: http://www.mijenix.com/fixit99.asp

I don't have much experience using the product, but I did use for a while ZipMagic 98 (another product by the same company) which i found was very impressive.

Hope the link helps

[Nathan]

A lot of those types of programs can cause havic BIG time in systems. I steer clear of them.

[pickel]

First Aid sucks too. Get Norton System Works 2000 and you'll be glad you did! I have the 2.0 but as soon as I find a deal going to upgrade. Good luck.

the pickel

The amount of time spent on Defrag depends on
the percentage the system is fragmented. Norton default fragmentation is 92%, then the icon goes red to let you know what to do.

[This message has been edited by pickel (edited 11-16-1999).]

[welsh wizard]

Hi BobCat
What wrong with your Norton, On some of my sys with 6.4 and above (mostly 70% full) they defrag in under 25 mins.
WW

[jbob]

I don't use ANY of those evil things. All I hear, is how people buy stuff like that, and whine when it never works. I don't use that stuff, and my Win2000 system NEVER crashes. I don't even use virus protection. It's all EVIL, no matter who makes it.

[seti]

I have system works 2000...all I use is speed disk, disk doctor, and win doctor.

[Apostle 83]

Jbob, no virus protection eh? Well, when your system crashes in 10 seconds, cause we all conspired to email you a trojan, well... Just kiddin. Do you do any downloading? If you do, you should get virus protection. But then again, doesn't win2000 have that built in? Seems I heard that somewhere, that you can update it n everything...

[bobcat]

Welsh Wizard - No idea why it takes that long with Norton, but atleast its less than N & B /forum/smile.gif

There are no disk errors etc.

[KillerBug]

I keep my computer closed up tight, and that actualy saves me resorces, and here is a little comparison:

virus scanner | virus
starts without permission | Same.
uses up system resorces | what do you know?
locks up some programs | ya.
costs $10 for trial | full version for free!

[jbob]

The way I see it, since Win2000 isn't actually an "Operating System" yet, there are no anti viruses made to work right with it. Everything it sees that it doesn't know about, is "a virus". I could be wrong, but either I'm going to get caught by a virus, or the or the anti-virus that's not made to work right. Either way, evrything I need to save is on CD-Rom.

[bambam]

I bought Guard Dog 2.05 (now a Mcaffe product) with a perital version the 4.0 virus scanner built-in . I get pretty good firewall and cookie protection but the program unexplainly crashes and locks up my system on a too frequent basis so I have given up on it. On to others like Norton Internet 2000....

[jammer699]

I use the fix-it 2000......the defrag is about twice as fast as windows......i love it!!!!!!!!!

[Wiz]

how about this? dont use "virus scanners" or "first aid" because they do more harm then good. ALl you have to do is not download things from people you dont know.

McAfee came in a software bundle i had on my comp, and when i first loaded it, i was given a message that here was a virus on my computer. This computer was brand new, never been online, and i was the only to touch it, so i knew it was wrong.

Thats all i have to say about that.

[daveleau]

Wow a blast from the past. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

THose are the same experiences I had w/ GD. Can't believe they haven't fixed it yet. I use Fix It Util 2000 also and use System Works 2000. My only complaint is that Fix It kills the registry entries for Norton and I have to reinstall it or fix the registry.
Dave

[Colonel Casio]

I've been using Norton products for several years. Speed Disk is miles ahead of the Windows counterpart & NAV has saved me twice from a virus that got downloaded with a file.They do take up some resources, but you must balance the risks vs the benefits & make up your mind.

[Paulgro]

Don't load crashguards in your machine, they love to crash Browsers!

McAfee products always seem to do more harm then good. Their Virus program is also known to crash your system. GuardDog works if you put it on a clean hard drive, other wise it tends to corrupt other programs. You also have a hell of a time uninstalling it.

[grandslammer]

I dunno here. I use Virus Scan regularly. Also Uninstaller. I update the Virus Scan through their backweb program. Get program updates that way too. Doesn't cost me anything. Don't know if this is an oversight or not, but........

BUt I do like their Uninstaller. Finds erroneous registry entries, temp files, etc. I like it, but I may well be the exception to the rule....

Tried guard dog a long time ago, but now just tell the A/V to scan downloads and use the web-x or whatever the h*ll it is.

Anyway, I'm goin to try that firewall program that was mentioned in another post.

If anyone has more info on that one, they may want to post it here. If I find it, I will.

Y'all be good now, 'ya hear?

Mikey P.

[Ziz]

I got tired of re-installing McAfee VS every couple of months, so I got rid of it and put in InoculateIT from Computer Associates (http://www.cai.com). Haven't had a problem yet, it's free and it doesn't expire! AND they offer free monthly virus signature file updates!!!

[This message has been edited by Ziz (edited 02-28-2000).]

[wyvrn]

Have never had a problem with McAfee myself. Like it better than Norton, which gave me the crash syndrome. Thanks for the link Ziz!

[smurfin]

I would have to disagree with jbob. I am a systems administrator at a health care facility(read...boring) I have to use anti virus software(gets bigtime expensive for nt networks)because of all the numbskulls I have. had one infect the network 4 times in less than a week..her best friend must be a virus programmer! Explained the first three times that downloading all the pretty little programs from unreliable sites was bad. 4th time she was still online when my server starts beeping at me because she was trying to email her newest infection to me. She thought I should take a look at this nifty new virus that she had seen an email warning about! Promptly removed her internet access and she hasn't gotten it back yet.

Yes protection is annoying and God bless everyone I hate most of the software out there(particularly Mcafee!) but it is a necessity in times when every other "cutsie" program is a virus. P.S. I have a solution for those of you having problems with Mcaffee..I had them too. Seems nothing would work, even uninstalling the program. Here goes,...Format...Format..Format one more time for good measure --THEN--install Windoze...then install Norton. 'nuff said.
Bill

[Johnny]

Been a Mcafee user for years, no problems, no viruses. Just lucky I guess.

[netsurfer]

I used to use McAfee VirusScan a LONG LONG time ago when it was like version 2.0 on win95... Something like '96 or something. It was a trial version that was pretty fast, but I never really wondered how effective it was. That is, until it actually detected Anti.Cmos.A. Well, detection or whatever.. it was too late and I was "offline" from the computer for an entire week.

Anyway, for the most part I stuck with AVP with just regular scans every once in awhile... it's very fast and actually, I prefer to scan from DOS because it will scan explorer.exe and other important exe files that have the possibility to be infected without having the OS crashing if a virus is IN those files. Also, dos scanners are faster. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Later, I got NAV v5.0 and it's pretty good. the LiveUpdate feature is so easy that it's actually worth doing. Before, I was too lazy to download files, unzip them and overwrite.

Currently, testing with my win2k machine (bought a 40 gig 7200rpm Maxtor !! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif) and already I know that NAV5.0 won't work with it from Norton's website... So like someone else in this thread mentioned, I'm antivirus-protectionless. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif