Updated "Not Protected" thread

[Saint78]

@Peacekeeper :

I've never had Norton sw on this computer. It's a Dell M1330 XPS and it came with McAfee Security Center trial. After the trial, I purchased a one ear subscription (I just by one year at a time, either I break my laptop and need a new one or I change security sw based on reviews). I started getting the "Not protected" warning in the last 2-3 weeks I think. I did not search this forum or other, because I thought it was an intermittant bug that would be fixed.

This version was about to expire, so I purchased a new license for Total Protection with 3 licenses instead. Before reading this post, I found the McAfee uninstall procedure. First I turned off wifi, then manually uninstalled the sw, then did a reboot. Then I ran the mcpr tool, reboot. Turned on wifi and downloaded the new sw with the new license from McAfee.

The problem with "Not Protected" did not go away with the new software. Everything stalls on my computer before I press the "Fix" button. It annoying as H......pardon my French.

It seems a recent update is causing the problem.

[Peacekeeper]

Sorry getting posters confused.

As poster above asked also post what processes are running search for and download Microsoft's process explorer and post the result as well. I am passing anything you post up the food chain.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

on 18/12/09 8:37:52 PM

[cpmdoc]

Just to update you.  Symantec online scanner is now clean but the problem still remains.

Chris

[Peacekeeper]

I assume you removed and reinstalled Mcafee after you cleaned up Symantec?

[cpmdoc]

I identified the files using the Symantec online web based scanner and deleted and uninstalled the programs as I wasn't using them.  Then I ran the online scanner again and everything appeared clean.

There was a recent McAfee update and so I am doing another full scan with McAfee and will report back.

Chris

[Peacekeeper]

Possible that the files could have damaged the mcafee files especially Mcsubdb.dat. So I do suggest if you get a popup a reinstall.

Message was edited by: Peacekeeper on 19/12/09 3:26:39 PM

[geoperkins]

> Thank you for contacting McAfee Consumer Support. How can I help you?
Customer: The McAfee Real-time Scanner service terminated unexpectedly.

Customer: This happens repeatedly.

Anu: Hi George, this is Anu from McAfee Technical Support and I would be assisting you today.

Customer: I can reproduce this issue by opening MMC or Task Manager (computer will freeze up for 90 seconds during McAfee timeout).

Customer: Here are messages from the Windows Vista application log. (will post these several coming).

Customer: I have already run Virtual Technician. No problem found.

Anu: To confirm, you are getting a Am I protected: No error message from your McAfee Security Center. Is this information correct?

Customer: I have already restarted/uninstalled/restarted/clean/re-install/update/scan/ using instructions provided by McAfee.

Customer: Log Name:      Application
Source:        McLogEvent
Date:          12/18/2009 8:11:42 PM
Event ID:      5051
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      Dell530
Description:
A thread in process C:\PROGRA~1\McAfee\VIRUSS~1\mcshield.exe took longer than 90000 ms to complete a request.
The process will be terminated. Thread id : 5780 (0x1694)
Thread address : 0x779F5E74
Thread message :

Build VSCORE.14.0.0.435 / 5301.4018
Object being scanned = \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files\NOS\bin\getPlus_Helper.dll
by C:\Windows\system32\services.exe
4(0)(0)
4(0)(0)
7200(0)(0)
7595(0)(0)
7005(0)(0)
7004(0)(0)
5006(0)(0)
5004(0)(0)

Customer: Log Name:      Application
Source:        McLogEvent
Date:          12/18/2009 8:13:59 PM
Event ID:      5000
Task Category: None
Level:         Information
Keywords:      Classic
User:          SYSTEM
Computer:      Dell530
Description:
McShield service started.
Engine version : 5301.4018
DAT version : 5836.0000

Customer: Log Name:      System
Source:        Service Control Manager
Date:          12/18/2009 8:17:13 PM
Event ID:      7034
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      Dell530
Description:
The McAfee Real-time Scanner service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 10 time(s).

Anu: George, not to worry. I am happy to assist you with this issue.

Anu: For verification purpose, May I have your home telephone number with area code first?

Customer: PLEASE ESCALLATE THIS CALL TO TIER-3 THIS CALL HAS BEEN OPENED MULTIPLE TIMES.

Customer: Please review the above information.

Customer: Telephone is already been placed into the chat registration. It is *************.(Removed for security PK)

Anu: How do you currently connect to the Internet? (Dial-up, DSL, Cable, or Wireless)

Customer: DSL 4Mbps

Customer: PLEASE ESCALLATE THIS CALL TO TIER-3 THIS CALL HAS BEEN OPENED MULTIPLE TIMES.

Customer: Put your supervisor on, please.

Anu: Sure George.

Anu: Before that let me know the exact issue with McAfee product.

Customer: It is obvious from the error messages I just posted in this chat. Please put your supervisor on.

Anu: George, have you contacted with the same issue before?

Customer: I have contacted McAfee before. I have posted on the community forums. Nothing is working. PLEASE ESCALLATE TO TIER-3.

Customer: Supervisor, please.

Anu: Sure George.

Anu: Before escalating this session kindly provide us the following details.

Anu: Primary Phone number:
  Secondary/ Preferred Phone:
  Primary Email address:
  Secondary/Preferred Email address:
  Convenient call back time with time zone:

Customer: ***************(Removed for security)

Customer: Removed for security

Customer: call now Central Standard Time

Anu: Thank you for the information.

Customer: Let's get going. It has been 17:00 minutes.

Customer: What is the delay? 18:00 minutes.

Anu: I will be giving you a link that will connect you to my supervisor right away. They will also be able to connect to and troubleshoot your computer remotely.

Customer: ok

Customer: ok. Now 20:00 minutes.

Customer: Please??  21:00 minutes.

Anu: George,I apologize the supervisor is currentl not available . We will be giving you a call back from our higher level of support within 24 business ours. Is that okay with you?

Customer: What ever it takes. Please let's get this problem fixed.

Customer: What is my incident support number?

Anu: Please let me know the convenient time for tomarrow  to give you a call back with time zone,
> representative Anu has requested system information from customer Customer.
> customer Customer has sent system information to representative Anu.

Customer: 4:00PM until Midnight Central Standard Time

Customer: What is my incident support number?

Anu: Teh case Id for this session is 484570-424170281.

Anu: Is there anything else I can help you with McAfee products today?

Customer: Thank you.

Message was edited by: Peacekeeper on 19/12/09 3:29:22 PM

Message was edited by: Peacekeeper on 19/12/09 3:32:26 PM

[plenty_otoole]

This is probably overkill, but here is a short Powerpoint for anybody who needs a little help getting set up. I'll post a second one later that shows how to use some of the features without spending an hour reading the manual. Let me know if you find any problems with it.

EDIT TO ADD -

I narrowed to one 24 hour period where a total of 9 restarts of McShield took place, some within five minutes of each other. I found one period which lasted three hours, twenty-six minutes and fifty-eight seconds in which there was no McAfee realtime protection at all. While there are other things that continued to run without interruption, it truly disturbs me that this one should have this sort of problem.

While I will continue to check to see if things remain stable after looking through literally 110megs of log files my machine has had exactly one timeout failure since the steps I took above. While I cannot state as fact that cleaning all of the things off found in the log were the corrective action that produced this result, unless I can duplicated it over the next few days I am going to focus on doing a little Christmas shopping for my computers since I keep getting a little unsolicited spam announcement in my Security Center Control panel lately. I guess marketing runs corporations everywhere, huh?

I did find an answer to one question asked earlier in the thread and that is whether or not the 60000ms is a hard limit. It is not. If you want to tinker with it, and I strongly suggest you don't, it is found in the registry key for the particular service (realtime scanning) you want to change. Microsoft has a KB article that will walk you to exactly the value that has to be changed. The problem you are going to find is that you also have to change a bunch of other things because that figure it based on a priority level for McShield which in turn impacts at least a dozen other services that launch and are killed off when they complete. The only way I knew some of them were there is by watching Process Explorer when they came up and closed out, which in turn pointed to another problem.

Anyways this is probably going to be my last post unless something drastic happens over the next couple days. Best of luck solving this one with the same approach to the same problem.

Message was edited by: plenty_otoole on 12/21/09 2:07:30 AM CST

[Saint78]

Meh...it's not "possibly" answered.

When are McAfee going to fix this. I am sick and tired of my computer locking up for what seems to be over a minute and then receiving the "Not Protected" nag from SecurityCenter.

I wan't McAfee to handle this properly and get onboard here. If not, I will demand a refund for my newly purchased subscription and do my best not to use McAfee products again.

[Peacekeeper]

Out of interest and against our advice Mcafee has released the beta version as a full version on the Australian site. Worth uninstalling and installing it maybe on 1 pc to see what happens.