McAfee Security Centre prevents filehippo downloads - Netguard fault

[tractorboy]

I've used McAfee since getting this laptop 2 years ago.  All has been good until last week when I found that when downloading files from filehippo didn't work.  Switching off the McAfee firewall allowed download - but not a desirable solution.

A got in touch with McAfee support - and it took 3 sessions and over 5 hours before their support engineer suggested turning off the 'Netguard' option in the firewall settings.  This has done the trick  but still don't know what has changed because Netguard has been on for 2 years!

Also, I'm 'paying for' Netguard but can't use it.  Will I get discount off my next subscription?

[k3tg]

Hi Tractorboy,

I wonder if you are using shared web hosting? If you are the same ip address may be used by many other websites that possible may contain malicious codes or contents. The ip address was probably added to block this in netguard. I am not an expert here but this is just a thought of mine. Maybe another mod will chime in with a better answer or solution.

[tractorboy]

Thanks for the suggestion Tom.  I'm afraid I don't know how to tell if I'm using shared web hosting.  The most recent change I made to my laptop was to install Mezzmo - a media serving app so I can play music and media on my networked TV.  Until then I'd been using Twonky - but was getting frustrated with its performance, so did some research and chose Mezzmo.  Streaming is now much slicker.

I noticed that after installing this Mezzmo, I got a few messages about Akamai Netsession.  I did some research on this.  Don't know if its part of Mezzmo or not, but there is no infor anywhere suggesting it is dangerous to have on your machine. But I went to the Akamai config thing on my Control Panel and turned Akamai off, and then turned on McAfee NetGuard, and still couldn't download from filehippo.

[Peacekeeper]

Allow the Ip that is showed as blocked in netguard.

[tractorboy]

Thanks Peacekeeper.  Tried that early on in my attempts to fix. No IPs in list & still no go.

[mapinkerton]

@tractorboy - What version of the firewall do you have installed now?  This same problem just started happening for me also today on Windows 7 when McAfee updated to firewall version 12.0.345.  This seems to be a frequent issue caused by a recent firewall upgrade.

All my downloads and streaming video regardless of site will stall after a few seconds, unless I disable Netguard.  I had actually been disabling the entire firewall until your post pinpointed the problem to the Netguard.

                 thanks,

                        Mike

[Peacekeeper]

I will test this Ok not on my main PC as it has the 2012 alpha version but the wife's win 7 PC. Can you tell me what download program and what files for example.

[mapinkerton]

With NetGuard enabled on my laptop, any YouTube video, or any file larger than about 1 MB will stall and not finish downloading.

It also happens on SpeedTest.net, which stalls in the middle of the speed test. 

Nearly every website will sporadically fail to download as well.

Everything works normally when NetGuard is turned off, and all of this started happening right after I rebooted this morning as requested for a McAfee upgrade.

                    thanks,

                                 Mike

[Peacekeeper]

OK will test a few downloads etc later on today.

[tractorboy]

Hi Mapinkerton,

The description of the problems you're experiencing correspond exactly with mine.  My Firewall is V12.0 build 12.0.345  The file download thing is the easiest to demonstrate, but there is a whole raft of issues when netguard on - eg slow browsing, pages not loading, slow scrolling, browser crashing etc.

The network manager in my office says he will give me a license for 'Sophos' which is what they use there.  My McAfee license expires in Spring 2012, and if the issue persists, I'll take him up on his offer.

Andy