Customer Reviews

McAfee Firewall

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(10)

 

 

I hope you work in networking or have prior experience with firewalls, because, if you don't, you'll have only cursory understanding of this product. They provide no substantial documentation either in the box or on their website. Since I work in this field, I was able to figure it out on my own, but you're probably better off shelling out a few more bucks for 'Black Ice Defender' or 'Norton Personal Firewall'. As for the actual software, it seems to work fine and has most of the standard features for firewall software in this price range. Overall, it's a good package for anyone looking for simple protection for their home systems and will keep all but the serious hackers out.

This is an adequate product if you do nothing but surf unsecure web pages and you're happy with their default configuration. If you shop online, run personal web server on your PC or do anything else that's not plain vanilla, this does not work. On top of that tech support is awful and the automated uninstall does not work.

I read one review which said that you could not use this if you weren't technical. Well, I'm technical and I hate it as well. If you understand network security the lack of basic options with this software is maddening.

Couldn't get it to work with Windows 2000 and a dial-up account. After searching their site for a while, I found one note to this effect. Two technicians couldn't help me at all with this problem, and I would think this is a fairly common setup. Bad tech support, poor installation and documentation.

I'll never buy another McAfee product again.

I have bought lots of stuff through Amazon but never written a review before. However, I want to warn others about this harmful piece of software. If you use it your PC may become almost unusable like mine did. I have a machine with 384MB RAM but, after installing McAfee Firewall, I kept getting "out of memory" error messages and could not launch any software. I checked on the internet and found others with this problem. After ununstalling my machine is working great again. DO NOT BUT THIS RUBBISH

I have purchased and used McAfee Firewall without any problems at all. I can install it, I can uninstall it, it hasn't caused any problems with any of the programs either I or my husband run (including, but not limited to, an HP scanner, digital camera, printer, nomad jukebox, MS office, chemdraw, adobe photoshop, illustrator, acrobat, etc.). I can access our email information through Arizona State University's IMAP system, a notoriously difficult task, as well as the library and other services available to graduate students, without a hitch. Bottom line is, you have to be able to configure options if you want to use McAfee. If you want something to install and not worry about, Norton is a better option; on the other hand, that means you usually can't configure their products for special use situations, such as school servers. McAfee is a great program because it allows the user to determine what it does and does not do. It allows the user to decide what should acess which inforamtion, and when. Of cousre, that means you need to know what it is saying when you get a notice, and you need to know how to configure it. If you want to be able to determine how much information goes to who, this is the program you want. If you want a blanket protection you don't have to mess around with ever, this is *not* for you. My only complaint is that I wish it were *more* technical in the information it presents in the alerts; I have to bend over backwards to find the technical details I want.

Do not buy this software. I should have read the reviews first. I have learned a lesson from this purchase. Impossible to install without affecting other components, it should be titled "McAfee Headache in a Box"

All I can say is that this product was a bit annoying to work with. It didn't seem to get along well with my system. Maybe it didn't like my Norton Anti-Virus or something - I'm not sure. The worst is that I could not play Unreal Tournament on-line with this running. Messages from McAffee Firewall would freeze up my game and PC and require a re-boot! Not cool. After twiddling with it and re-booting several times I uninstalled it. Get ZoneAlarm Pro instead. It's the thing to have.

My wife bought this program because she wanted to protect our computer from Hacker attacks since we added a cable modem, which, along with its high-speed access, has an "always on" two-way link to the Internet that makes our computer vulnerable to such attacks. And on that front, it appears to have done its job. At least, we don't seem to have had any hacker attacks. But that's where the benefits end and the nightmares begin. You see, my wife also wanted to access her office Outlook e-mail from home, and it would not work on our computer. Her Techie at work told her it was probably the Firewall, and said she should turn it off. Turning off all filtering did not do the trick, so we tried to uninstall the application. No dice. The incorrectly named "Help" file said there should be a file labeled "uninstall CPD" in the program folder. No such file could be found. Their online support said their should be an uninstall Firewall option under the start menu, but it was not there. On top of that, the Help file warned that we should not use Windows' Remove Programs feature to uninstall because it could damage our system! Ultimately what we have then is a program that was designed to protect our system that has instead gummed up the works, and prevented our computer from doing something very basic and important, like reading office email at home! What's worse, because there is no uninstall function, and remove programs doesn't work (I ultimately tried it, fingers crossed), I feel like my computer has been taken hostage by McAfee! On top of all that, their customer service is a joke. In addition to the laughable help file, their web page is extremely confusing (just try and find the answer to my uninstall program problem, or even how to email Tech support!) AND you have to pay a fee for phone support, EVEN THOUGH IT'S THEIR OWN PRODUCT's FAULT!!

As you can see, I am frustrated. The irony in all of this is that McAfee sells another program called McAfee Uninstaller. I laughed a gloomy laugh when I saw that on their web site. Could it be that this program is designed to FORCE you to buy their other program to get rid of it?

Who knows, maybe tech support will finally get back to me with a solution, or maybe I will have reinstalled Windows by then, I don't know.

Bottom line: AVOID THIS PRODUCT.

I must agree with everyone else. I got this program with Mcafee Office 2000. It is impossible to Uninstall this program properly. There is no Uninstall_cpd file at all. If I remove it through Windows control panel, it screws up my network connection and I must reinstall Windows to get it back. I am about to go through this again for the last time. I am throwing the whole Office Suite in the trash!

After I installed McAfee Firewall, my HP Laserjet printer stopped working. It appears that the firewall software caused my printer driver to freeze. Tech support was not helpful at all. Their only suggestion was to uninstall and reinstall the firewall. After I unstalled it, my printer started working again. When I reinstalled the firewall, my printer would not work. Based on the other reviews, it sure looks like this software has a bad habit of hosing various software and hardware applications.