Site Advisor 3.7 is crashing Firefox

[jimmymac50]

I was just asking a question.

My computer did not ask me to reboot after the last Site Advisor update on the 28th May.

dougk_t3DOU said 'As with all SiteAdvisor updates a reboot is required for the update to complete.'

Can anyone remember if they rebooted their computer after the May 28th update as it might explain why I am having more problems than most especially in  IE.

[catdaddy]

Please do not misconstrue my initial comments. The way McAfee has changed the way they update, actually does so without a Prompt to restart. With the (12.8.xxx) Versions. I am simply saying that Site Advisor will basically do a silent install,and one would have to "Reboot" afterwards to complete the installation.

You can make certain of the New Version/Build by checking your McAfee Security Center/About to see if the version has changed. or simply open your Site Advisor,and check as well. I agree fully, you will recieve no "Prompt" to Re-Boot your system.... As long as you have rebooted after the last Version, whether it was the same day or not. It would have completed the install to (then- 3.7.0.187).  Just as the case may be with todays New Version/Build - 3.7.0.190.

I don,t think by you not immediately rebooting caused the issues with 3.7.0.187, to answer your question.

Regards,

Message was edited by: catdaddy on 6/6/14 4:33:04 PM EDT

[dougk_t3]

Hi jimmymac50,

SiteAdvisor downloads updates "silently" i.e. in the background, caches the update files and then implements the update itself during reboot.  Many programs function this way.

As I understand it, once upon a time every program running on Windows 95, 98, or NT, seemed to be constantly asking for a reboot.  Since Windows 2000, programs have had the ability to suppress the reboot requests.  I guess the thinking was that you'd shutdown or reboot the system fairly regularly (daily? weekly?) anyway.  Consequently, there wasn't any point in asking for the reboot because the system would be restarted at some point anyway.  Consequently, many people seem to believe that if they weren't asked to reboot that a reboot isn't (ultimately) necessary. 

Personally, I'd rather get the reboot request so I'd know that updates are available and that I should reboot to get the latest security or functionality that the update was created for.  And of course, I come from that Windows 95/98 'older generation' when you had to reboot everytime you made a system change or updated a program.  🙂

[jimmymac50]

I understand that now.

As a point of interest and maybe it made no difference but I do recall when I had the McAfee update on the 28th May all open pages on IE crashed with that error message directly after the update completed. Every McAfee update since then has crashed IE.

[catdaddy]

I can understand your frustration, however I can honestly say that I have not experienced such. As Doug explained more in depth, in regards to the silent updates/Restarting. I feel better now, as I was only attempting to be helpful.

Wishing you all the Very Best,

Regards,

[Hayton]

jimmymac50 wrote:
Every McAfee update since then has crashed IE.

Well, strictly speaking not true. The crashes were all (I hope) the result of that one buggy SiteAdvisor update. Other McAfee updates would have been to Firewall, Anti-Spam, Security Center and Anti-Virus (you can confirm this by opening Security Center and clicking 'About'). Those updates had nothing to do with the crashes. And SiteAdvisor updates come separately and silently, as DougK said : SiteAdvisor checks for updates every time your machine starts up and also every time it comes out of hibernation.

I hope it's all fixed now. Thankfully my Windows 7 machine got stuck on SiteAdvisor 3.6 and has sailed through all this without crashing once. It's a pity there isn't an option anywhere to revert to a known working version when we find a problem in a new release.