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richter_scale
Former Member
Message 1 of 10

Unwanted Virus Scan Behavior

I started having this problem about a week ago ... every night when I start doing some work on my computer, it locks up completely for quite a long period (at least 15 minutes or so) and I finally found the common denominator. In the lower right system tray in Windows XP, I see an animated circle with arrows at each end, rotating around and around (red on a gray background, like the McAfee "M" icon), and when I hover over it, I get a popup message that reads "Installing McAfee Virus Scan: Started." The whole time while this is happening, my machine is totally locked up and I can't do anything; as soon as the little animation stops, everything works again. This never happened before, so why is it happening now? And, more importantly, how can I get it to stop? I have VirusScan 13.0, SecurityCenter 9.0 and Personal Firewall 10.0. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
9 Replies
matrixluke
Contributor
Message 2 of 10

RE: Unwanted Virus Scan Behavior



You can disable it happening. But that will stop you from getting daily McAfee updates.
exbrit
MVP
MVP
Message 3 of 10

RE: Unwanted Virus Scan Behavior

The updater does seem to grab quite a bit of the machines resources. A lot depends these days on your installed memory (RAM). How much do you have? The minimum recommended is 256mb, but I would say these days that 1gb is more realistic.
It also depends on what other applications you have running.
richter_scale
Former Member
Message 4 of 10

RE: Unwanted Virus Scan Behavior

I do in fact only have 256mb, but I don't understand why this seemed to just start happening. I've always used the computer about the same amount of time, at the same time of day, for a long time now. I understand that it's important to get the latest updates, but is there a way to set this to download at a different time of day? I have my Windows updates set to run in the middle of the night so it doesn't affect me in this way. Please let me know. Thank you.
matrixluke
Contributor
Message 5 of 10

RE: Unwanted Virus Scan Behavior



You cannot schedule an update. But you can disable the automatic update and then select the suitable option from Security Center-> Configure-> Automatic Updates-Advanced.
richter_scale
Former Member
Message 6 of 10

RE: Unwanted Virus Scan Behavior

Thank you for the information. Any explanation as to why this has just started to become a problem for me in the past couple of weeks, when I have had this computer and McAfee products for several years?
exbrit
MVP
MVP
Message 7 of 10

RE: Unwanted Virus Scan Behavior

I can only assume that, as time goes by, the updates become larger and perhaps they've crossed a certain threshold...? Only conjecture. Perhaps Luke you have an idea?
matrixluke
Contributor
Message 8 of 10

RE: Unwanted Virus Scan Behavior

I think upgrade of McAfee from 8.1 to 9.0 could be one cause. Also for 256 MB RAM is the minimum requirement, You atleast should have 512 MB RAM for the pefrect sychronization and perfomance of all the programs.
exbrit
MVP
MVP
Message 9 of 10

RE: Unwanted Virus Scan Behavior

Security Center 9 certainly uses fewer resources and as far as memory is concerned that is the easiest way to improve performance on any PC.

I remember that I used to have 512mb only (256 x 2 DDR) and I increased that to 4gb (1gb x 4) and the difference in performance was amazing.
vinod_r2
Reliable Contributor
Reliable Contributor
Message 10 of 10

RE: Unwanted Virus Scan Behavior



But then it provides lots of updates on a daily basis.
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