Total Protection v11.6 Conflict with Blue Iris and Crashes PC

[lotty]

Experiencing a conflict or incompatibly between McAfee Total Protection v11.6 and Blue Iris software which triggers a locking and or crashing of the PC after 1.5 hours of uptime.  Issue began immediately after McAfee automatically installed v11.6 on 7/30/12. This installation prompted me to reboot the PC.

PC is a Dell optiplex W7 64 I7 processor 8GB ram

This PC is dedicated to run an application called Blue Iris which records IP security cameras via the Blue Iris software. Until this version of the McAfee was installed both McAfee and Blue Iris ran without issue for more than 1 year. The application reads various the IP camera feeds and writes clips to disk.

After much troubleshooting it appears the new version 11.6 of McAfee attempts to real time scan the blue iris activity loading the scan into memory cache but fails to release the memory. After 1.5 hours the PC locks up and can only be accessed by forcing a power off and rebooted. The locking occurs when the memory usage hits 7.3 GB.  Once the PC is rebooted the memory is reset and begins  at 1.8 GB . During the 1.5 hour period leading upto a crash the memory usage increases progressive but never resets. If the Blue Iris service is stopped the situation freezes the memory but does not release the memory back to a proper baseline 2.5 GB. As soon as the Blue Iris service is restarted the path the crash resumes.  

If McAfee Is uninstalled, the Blue Iris and PC runs without issue and memory usage never tops 2.5 GB .. no matter how long the PC runs. As soon as McAfee reinstalled the crashing resumes.

My guess is something in the new version of McAfee causes the application to scan the Blue Iris feed causing an effective memory leak with the McAfee application. What needs to happen is to exclude or force a release of the memory to parallel the Blue Iris application as it process video clips.

Trouble shooting

1. Uninstall McAfee, run clean tool, reinstall .. no changes
2. Attempted to add exceptions to virus scans but the application gives error message that the blue iris executable is a critical system file. Also tried to add the folder but same message. Further it is not clear that the regular virus scan and the related exclusions are inherited or apply to the real time scanning.
3. Real time scanning does not appear to have any ability to add an exclusion for the blue iris executable.
4. Added blue iris to firewall. But does not seem this is a firewall issue.
5. My support sessions the McAfee tech support has checked and rechecked settings

Communication with McAfee Tech Support

I have been on the phone with McAfee must be 10 times over past week. The last session was with a second level support that called me on a scheduled follow-up support session. The second level support agent agreed he had observed all the behaviors documented above and that this did appear to be a bug in the software.  He said the case needed to be handled by an engineer above second level support. I am waiting on a call but not sure if or when this will happen.

[exbrit]

I would wait on that upper level support call as the best option right now.   Other than a few tweaks in the Firewall I wouldn't know where to start as there are no threads regarding this anywhere here.

Read this thread which may help in allowing you to submit the program to McAfee Labs for clearance: https://community.mcafee.com/thread/2016

Also as a double-check just in case:

Double-click the taskbar icon to open SecurityCenter

Click Web and Email Protection

Click Firewall

Click Internet Connections for Programs

Ity will take a while for them to load

Click the word Program at the top to arrange them alphabetically

Find the software and using the Edit button if necessary give it full access and try turning off Netguard to see if that helps.

[lotty]

Thanks for the suggestion but that was already covered in troubleshooting.

[lotty]

Also this does not appear to present as a false detection of a virus .. but rather a memory leak

Just disabling the virus protection while the McAfee software is still installed has not affect. If McAfee software is installed and teh Blue Iris is running .. the PC cashes in 1.5 hours like a clock.

[exbrit]

How weird.  Let's hope the elevated support call comes in soon then.

[exbrit]

I assume you've asked Blue Iris for any info on clashes with security software?

[lotty]

Again my guess is this is an odd bug in McAfee .. but it probably is triggered in very special sitations .. this particular software "Blue Iris" records and managges real time IP camera feeds .. so it processes a clip at a time but each discrete clip digested by the software can be a very large file .. my guess is this constant stream of processing large clips .. is what triggers the bug .. but just a guess.

[exbrit]

I would say that's a pretty good guess at what's happening.

[lotty]

Yes I have been in communication with the lead developer and kept him informed of the issue as well as troubleshooting. He thinks its a bug in McAfee as well. He has not seen other problems with adverse interactions with other antivirus packages.

Another thing is I have several PCs with exact same configuration ..i run updates on all PCs every day but this is the only PC that pulled down the new version of McAfee v11.6. The other PCs have v11.0. I have noticed in the past that big version upgrades are not pulled down at the same time by all my PCs. Now I know if I force an uninstall and reinstall i will get the latest versions. But my point is that this PC is likely on the front bleeding edge of this new version and that is one reason there are few other cases. I would not be surprised if this is intended by McAfee. Of course not targeted at me in a negative way but to break apart groups of their customers as to smoke out these issues on a small group of customers and give them time to find and fix before rolled out on a larger population.

[exbrit]

I hope that they aren't doing that as after all the products do go through testing before release.  I know they do phase upgrades gradually in case there are problems, but they wouldn't intentionally release something they knew would cause problem.

Anyway, I trust that support can indentify the culprit.

.

Message was edited by: Ex_Brit on 14/08/12 7:13:17 EDT AM