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jmichae3
Contributor
Message 1 of 39

mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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after about 2 weeks worth of scanning, mcafee crashes. 

maybe it found a really large file or something (I have some zip files that are 10GB and I have test data files that are 9GB).

Fri 11/11/2011 18:19:13.71|C:\DOCUME~1\JIMMIC~1|>\u\df -a *

      *C:------------------**********************   1.13TB/   2.00TB(56.61%)

       E:-------------------------*************** 786.10GB/   2.00TB(39.30%)

     TOT:---------------------*******************   1.91TB/   4.00TB(47.95%)

TOT USED:--------------------********************   2.08TB/   4.00TB(52.05%)

Fri 11/11/2011 18:19:23.85|C:\DOCUME~1\JIMMIC~1|>

this is how much free space I have.

mcafee should not load a file into RAM to do its file scans - that is unacceptable (though it may be quick - mcafee using a memory mapped file?  I don't know - would that work? never tried that before, might try it sometime with a 9GB file just to see what happens).

anyway, I am having a crash, and it happens every time I scan.

it makes me wonder why I bought this product. I escalated this issue to level 2 or 3 tech support and they said "well, don't do that.  2TB of data is not supported."

I think this is unacceptable. 

  • mcafee is going to have to get used to the fact that there are mutli-terabyte drives out there.  3TB drives have just come out, and they are only going to get bigger.  Antec makes a computer case which can hold 9 drives, and there's a nice 1200W power supply to support them.
  • a scan of 2TB of data takes at least 2 weeks.  to simply copy this data from drive c: to drive e: with xcopy, it takes 2 days.  If you need large test files to fill the drive with, you can create them with a program I wrote: http://sourceforge.net/projects/createfile
  • you should get rid of any memory leaks first.
  • a session of windows XP Pro becomes less stable as time goes on, so speed of scanning is important. I understood this years and years ago.  I don't know if this is due to a bug in mcafee or a bug in windows.  could be both.  hard to tell, because I have always run with an antivirus package of some type.  I know this is working against me here and is not helping my case any, but what can I do?  the scan takes 2 weeks+ when it should take 2 days.
  • tried mcafee realtime scanner with scheduling off and using clamwin.  mcafee tries to remove clamwin temporary sig files as a virus.  it's not.  clamwin hung in the middle of a scan also.  wil probably have to report a bug with them.  I am thinking of switching to norton because of the size of my data, but I have no assurances it will work.  somebody make *something* work please so I can be a happy customer.
  • I know someone with a mac who has 10,000 songs and just about as many high-resolution pictures in multiple copies (has adobe lightroom).  stuffs this into 300GB.  I think people are going to do a lot more. there are some creative folk out there who do LOTS of things (I am one of them).  I have about 50 software projects, and I maintain a 600 page web site and several other web sites, and I do video, photos, music, authoring and lots of other stuff with this computer.  just think about business users.  if they are doing video, and they are doing scans, they are going to have probably a large RAID system and use it up.  so what will mcafee do then?

please fix, thanks.

1 Solution

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Peacekeeper
Message 12 of 39

Re: mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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Ok understand now so maybe limit scans to custom scans that can skip compressed files. Mcafee will not count these scans as equivalent to scheduled scans though.

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38 Replies
Peacekeeper
Message 2 of 39

Re: mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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What version of Mcafee have you?

2011 has the feature to not scan folders of your choice in scheduled and custom scans. Is this  a full scan or 1 or the above two?

Make sure use minimal resources is off and do not have a dvd in the drive when scanning (that is another story)

jmichae3
Contributor
Message 3 of 39

Re: mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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11.0.623

I did not try the use minimal resources yet I don't think.

jmichae3
Contributor
Message 4 of 39

Re: mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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mcafee should not be this broken...  someone should fix it.  I can detect DVD drives in windows with my code without crashing (I can provide you the code, it's Open Source, but that probably doesn't help mcafee).  the DriveExists function  involves calling the win32 function GetDriveType() passing the argument C:\ (or E:\ or whatever driove letter you have).

then you check for ALL the possible drive types:

  • DRIVE_CDROM
  • DRIVE_NO_ROOT_DIR
  • DRIVE_REMOVABLE
  • DRIVE_FIXED
  • DRIVE_REMOTE
  • DRIVE_RAMDISK
  • whatever is not covered in the list, in case some new drive type was added since the program came out.

to get the default drive, you simply call GetLogicalDrives() and you get a bitmap of drive letters that exist.

from there, you call _getdcwd()

if it's a cdrom, you check if the drive is readonly I should think  (test it first, I should try it to see what it does).

call CreateFile() with GenericRead and OPEN_EXISTING permissions and INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE for the permissions to copy and get a HANDLE.

call DeviceIoControl(...IOCTL_DISK_IS_WRITABLE...)

CloseHandle()

there's your cdrom-drive-crash patch in a nutshell.  send that to engineering.  this drove me nuts for a long time.

jmichae3
Contributor
Message 5 of 39

Re: mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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I forgot a call to DeviceIoControl(...IOCTL_STORAGE_CHECK_VERIFY...) and when you call CreateFile you use \\.\C: as your drive string.  you call this within the switch() statement to the list of drive types.  or you can simply return a false for the function for DRIVE_CDROM if you don't want to mess with them because you can't write to them.

Peacekeeper
Message 6 of 39

Re: mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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Jiim Are you referring to my comment that Mcafee has an issue with DVD scanning?. It seems to hunt in circles on compressed game files. It detects the drive fine just has trouble exiting the scan when a DVD with a game disk inserted is scanned.

So is the above still applicable?

jmichae3
Contributor
Message 7 of 39

Re: mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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no. that's only for proper detection.  never mind that I guess.  is 2012 faster by any amount?

Peacekeeper
Message 8 of 39

Re: mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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If by 2012 you mean the 1 in alpha at the moment not that I have noticed. if you mean the 2012 sold in shops and online that is 2011 reboxed something marketing does. 2011/2012 does I have found scan faster but compressed files still are a bug bear.

jmichae3
Contributor
Message 9 of 39

Re: mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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hmm. I have zillions of compressed files, maybe that's why the scan takes so long

this may be why the 140GB "test" performed by some reviewers was so good looking...

plain old data files.  I do a lot of software development, and file compression and archiving and ISO packaging is my thing...

still, this does not solve the crashes during the scans. 

I have turned off "weekly" (hah! try monthly)  scans.  I don't care how long it takes, asa long as the machine is still usable by the time it finishes, and it actually finishes without crashing.  in other words, it should work.
if it has to skip my ginourmous zip files or whatever it does behind the scenes, that's OK.

Peacekeeper
Message 10 of 39

Re: mcafee scan crashes when there is 1.13TB of data

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As I said custom and scheduled scans can skip folders of your choice. Can you keep all the files in 1 or several folders? That way they will not be scanned but still ptotected by Real time scanning.

I have 1 128Gb C drive and 2 1Tb data drives and scanning them takes 2 hrs with zip files includeed and 1 hour with their folders excluded.

I think 2012 does things differently but early days yet

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