Customer Reviews

MCAFEE VIRUSSCAN V8 CD

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

First off, let me tell you what I believe: there's no single piece of perfect anti-virus software on the market today. Different users swear by different products. I have tried all the major anti-virus packages: McAfee, Panda, Trend Micro, NAV, AVG, etc. All have pros and cons. My strong feelings are: NAV 2004 is absolutely the worst (kills your system, screws up your e-mails, leaves undocumented files on your system...); AVG has a free edition which is good for basic anti-virus needs; Panda is buggy (disabled my IE); and you'll do well with either McAfee or Trend Micro.

I run MVS 2004 v8.0 on my Dell desktop which is exposed to lots of potential Internet security risks, and the software runs seamlessly, unlike the terrible experience I had with NAV 2004 Professional. It also scans faster than NAV, and has not crashed once so far. Updating virus definition could be simpler, and McAfee likes to push ads on you (just like Symantec), but at least my system is well protected. For this alone, I think MVS deserves four stars.

My recommendation: stay away from NAV 2004 - it's the worst program ever written; try Panda for 30 days to see if it works for you; get AVG free edition (at grisoft dot com) if you don't surf the web endlessly like me; get McAfee (...); get Trend Micro if all else fails.

In any case, do not let more than one anti-virus program run at the same time on your system. Also, download free spyware busters like Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy (from download dot com) regularly until Microsoft improves IE security.

I've been using AVG Anti Virus for several months. I was told that Mc Afee was better. So I decided to upgrade to the better product. This is the first product I've paid for that hit me with advertisements. Then every time I boot I have screens that let me know I don't have other Mc Afee products installed. The system check told me of I was not safe as I did not have some of the products installed. The last straw was when they sent my rebate back for no UPC code enclosed, a bold lie. This was the last straw. I'm now back to the free AVG Anti virus. They have updates almost daily way more than Mc Afee, my system runs faster, I don't look at "nag" screens, and I'm virus free. This time the free product is better. Keep your money and let you computer run better! They don't make it easy to get your money back.

To me, a virus is something that you do not wish to put on your system that takes over functions and damages your computer. McAfee VirsuScan 8.0 is exactly that. Having installed (at least the install went fine) on a brand new XP platform which ran very smoothly, problems immediately came up. First, system response time dropped into the cellar, looking at task manager it seemed that the McAfee products were consuming all of my CPU cycles. More importantly, the system itself became unstable, GPU failures and spontaneous reboots.

This is the truly infuriating part. After fiddling with it for a while and receiving no help from their tech support other than 'you must have a virus already', I decided to uninstall. Following their uninstall procedures, it seemed that all was done, yet McAfee remains behing, launching a process (MCINFO.EXE) every time the system starts that requests access to the internet to download updates and sucking up CPU cycles. According to McAfee (and other concurring message boards), the only way to completely remove McAfee products is to search drives and manually delete files one by one, followed by dangerous searches and edits of the system registry.

Why a manufacturer of a software intended to protect my system from problems would create such an unstable and inherently stubborn software is truly beyond comprehension. I thoroughly encourage others to avoid this and all McAfee security products!

Having just switched from Norton Antivirus to McAfee VirusSan this year, I'm very satisfied with the job McAfee does. It has a similar feature to Live Update where it loads new virus definition updates automatically in the background when there are any available. The updates subscription is the same as Norton's--one year. The interface is a bit more cluttered than Norton's, but it's a very minor downside. I'd happily buy next year's version of VirusScan if it was available this cheap again!

As far as virus protection, this program seems to do a decent job. Other than that, it's an awful program. The interface is pretty bad; it doesn't have the standard Windows menus at the top, making it difficult to find what you're looking for. A large portion of the interface is dedicated to telling you what McAfee products you DON'T own, and implies that you won't be safe unless you purchase them. There's even a bright red "virus advisory" section telling you about the latest virus threat, reminds you that ViruScan users are protects, and provides a link to purchase ViruScan. Trying to sell me something they know I already own is particularly annoying.

I am also confused about how the automatic updates work. It seems to only update at startup. Since I usually put my computer to sleep instead of restarting it, I might not get updates as often as I should.

The only reason I have ViruScan is because it came pre-installed on my computer. I'm switching back to Norton or another as soon as I can.

I've been using McAfee VirusScan software for about 6 years, and Version 8.0 for almost a year and I've never had any problems with it. The updates are automatically installed, and lately seems like there is an update every couple days .. I just get an informational message that it's been installed for me. I've never been infected with a worm or virus in the last 6 years, so I can't speak to what kind of experience one has with the McAfee support staff if does happen. But then again, I consider it must have pretty good protection if I've never been infected even once when many people I know have been. (I am also running the ZoneAlarm Pro firewall, which I very highly recommend.) I bought Ver 8 because I was used to the McAfee user interface, and several PC magazines rated it tops recently. One thing that disappointed me about the most recent version is that they no longer have a logging mechanism to keep track of what happens during a scan (I was trying to run scans through WIN XP Task Scheduler and wanted to make sure scans were running properly ... And by the way, when I sent McAfee support an email message asking about this, I received a response in less than 24 hours, explaining that indeed the logger was removed in version 8, and by the way there's currently a bug in WIN XP Task Scheduler functionality.) All in all, I'll stick with McAfee...

If you had asked me how good this product had been for the past several years (or maybe decade), I would have rated it at 5 stars simply because I had never encountered a virus to begin with and it never game me problems conflicting with other software, UNTIL.......
I had a "worm" (Zafi) infection on 6/13/04 with an up to date engine and this peice of crap didn't pick it up. McAfee's website said one needs an engine no loder than 6/14/04!!! That's 3 days after the worm had spread and infected my system already. The worm didn't allow me to run and install an update so I used McAfee's stinger to locate and disinfect the system (for that, I'm thankful). When I attempted to reinstall Mcafee ver.8, I got the message that a newer version is installed on my system already but I can no longer locate it to delete. I went over their site and took step-by-step to manually uninstall. Did all of that and the software still wouldn't install. I contacted their chat support. A total nightmare. 2 hours chatting with tech who's probably helping (or should I say wasting other people's time) and giving me total generic answers that don't even pertain to my peoblem. That's total BS and fraud to sell software that couldn't do what it was supposed to do (i.e. protect me from a worm because their engine required to detect it was not up to date till 3 days later), then the software I paid 40$ for to last me 1 year (and only had for 3 months), I can no longer reinstall on my machine and all their tech support can do is to tell me to defrag and do clean install when I had way beoyend that to clean every trace of the old software to no avail. What a shame. Wish I was an attorney with the time needed to pursue this. I'm sure there are others like me facing this situation as I type this. For those giving this one 5 stars, wait till you get infected with a virus or a worm with an up to date engine that proves useless then try to get the software up after the worm disables it and find out you can no longer reinstall because the disk keeps seeing a ghost newer version when nothing exits and no customer support. Hope will have better luck with Norton. I'll be shopping for a new virus scan software tomorrow. Hope this helps. I'm mad.
6/23/04 Bought the Zonealarm Security suite and so far have been satisfied with it. It's a new release and I could only find it at their website.

I've had NAV on my past 3 home cumputer systems; never a problem. I recently bought gateway 4.1 P4 HT 1 gig memory. Very proud to have my new toy, I wanted to protect it. After the second system scan I found 2 viruses. After investigating I found the Auto Protect option was OFF. I tried every option of turning it on. IT WOULD NOT TURN ON. I contacted NAV support by email because a phone call costs AS MUCH AS A NEW ANTI-VIRUS! I was given the same step by step process that is online, which also failed to fix the problem. ITs still OFF and my subscription runs out next month. With this POOR customer support I will not update to Norton again. Vote with your dollar America!

As a long time Norton AntiVirus user, I switched to McAfee VirusScan about four months ago. Big, big mistake. Does it stop viruses, worms, and trojans? Yea, when the software is working. Unlike Norton AntiVirus, McAfee VirusScan is prone to script errors and all sorts of the other little bugs. This renders your PC unable to scan your files. As an example, if you change your date format from the typical mm/dd/yyyy format, McAfee goes crazy. It doesn't work. From what I can tell, McAfee must use Internet Explorer as its framework or something. Very annoying.

Well, then I started getting more script errors that were supposedly related to Microsoft's task scheduler. After finding that all of McAfee's FAQs on the subject didn't help, I tried talking with McAfee's chat support. I could tell that the poor guy on the other end was justing cutting and pasting potentional solutions. I kept telling him that I had already tried all his suggestions, but he couldn't take the hint. After a while, he wanted me to check with Microsoft support for help. Talk about passing the buck. And have you ever tried to get support from Microsoft? Yea, right.

So I ended up deleting McAfee VirusScan from my PC. I went back to Norton AntiVirus 2004 this week and feel much more secure now. Seriously. I don't know why I tried switching in the first place. Norton always worked like a charm. I'm sticking with Norton AntiVirus from now on.

I haven't had any problems with this like other users writing reviews have. It has really helped my system run smoothly, and it takes out a trojan virus or so just about every day. I just hope they come through with the rebate they promised.