virus scan deleted a lot of my work

[mcafeeisavirus]

I'm really angry, almost a year of work that I had saved was automatically deleted when i used Mcafee Sucurity Center 7 for the first time.  I had backups on an external hard drive but they got removed too.  i wasn't writing a virus and i'm not even sure if the files contained a virus, other scan programs, adaware for example didn't detect that the files had a virus.

McAfee virus scan/security center has caused me a lot of distress, i wouldn't recommend it.

death to the people who make virus's

and also i want to close security center, there isn't even a f**** way to do that

[exbrit]

SecurityCenter 7...?   It's obsolete so am assuming you mean 9.

False detections can easily occur if out of date software is used due to the older engines being employed.

The items in question should all be in the quarantine folder.

Can you clarify please?

Please include the following information:

What is your operating system, service pack and are you up to date with Microsoft update?  There are two ways of checking this.  Go to Start/Run and type in winver then click the Enter key.  Or, right-click My Computer in the Start Menu or on your desktop (or Computer in Vista) and select Properties.  Post what it says.

What McAfee products do you have?  Right-click the taskbar icon and select Open SecurityCenter and then click "View Details" or "About" at the lower right of the new window.  Post the details from each module.

Message was edited by: Ex_Brit on 11/23/09 7:10 AM

[mcafeeisavirus]

hi, thanks for replying.  It was a while ago my files were deleted, but i found i had some of the oldest files on a usb stick, which i've locked so that mcafee can't delete them as they have apparantly the virus Univ.script/99a.  I think i would have had the sense to check the quarintine folder when the most recent files were "removed" but it did say they were removed and normally mcafee says they are quarintined if they aren't totally deleted, the best files are definately lost because i've reformatted the hard drive since they were removed.  I still want to have access to the recovered files but make sure any viruses are removed.

The security center version at the time was V 7.2, virus scan V 11.2.  I upgraded to 8.1 and 11.2 but still got univ script detected.

Security Center

V 8.1

Build 8.1.175

AffId: 439-3

Language: en-us

Last Update: 25 /11/2009

Virus Scan

V 11.2

Build: 11.2.124

Language: en-us

Last Update: 25/11/2009

DAT Version: 5028.0000

DAT Creation Date: 10/05/2007

Engine Version: 5100.0194

some of that was created in 2007 ?

i'm up to date with microsoft update.

Windows XP Home Edition v5.1 Service Pack 3

My subscription has run out for mcafee, and i'm not buying a new one because i don't want to have my projects deleted as i'm working on them.  It doesn't make sense to me why it would only be my project files and no other that have that Univ Script virus, so i'm assuming it's something i've typed in each file, a sentence or something that mcafee thinks is virus code.

I think the best thing for me to do would be to use different virus removal software and with a bit of help try to remove the virus if there is one.  Univ.script/99a is apparantly not very harmful but i don't think that's even what the virus is because mcafee is the only scanner that detects it.

[exbrit]

Well one thing is for sure, that McAfee software is still out of date as you should have SecurityCenter v9.15, VirusScan 13.15 etc. etc. which could possibly contribute to odd behaviour.   If your subscription was up to date then it would have upgraded to that by now.  Older engines often make incorrect analyses.

That said, any anti-virus will eventually detect something incorrectly.  That's when you should submit the culprit to the appropriate people to have it corrected.

In the case of McAfee VirusScan details are shown in this discussion: http://community.mcafee.com/message/6645#6645

Message was edited by: Ex_Brit on 05/12/09 7:44:47 EST PM

[mcafeeisavirus]

thanks,  i'm going to stick with software that lets me choose whether to remove possible infections or not.  i think losing all my stuff was just an unfortunate cooincidence but it's unlikely to happen again.  though i won't trust mcafee products since one deleted my work without my permission.

[exbrit]

Well good luck.