Well today I had my second experience with McAfee's so-called tech support. Needless to say I was greatly impressed... Impressed by the total incompetence of the representative and his lack of knowledge about either McAfee products or computers.
I came to the McAfee website looking for support for what was a new problem for me. Recently McAfee WebAdvisor has started consuming ridiculous levels of both CPU cycles and RAM -- and doing so when WebAdvisor shouldn't even be active.
I chose the live chat "support" because my hearing isn't great for the phone and I find chat works better, especially if we are likely to need to use a URL or other details. I was very quickly connected to "Gerald C" and everything went downhill quickly from there.
Right from the start, I wasn't happy with Gerald claiming he needed my "billing address" to verify my account -- which seemed silly when I was logged in with my McAfee account.
Once we got past that, I explained that Windows Task Manager was showing McAfee WebAdvisor using over 50% CPU and over 5GB of RAM. His initial response was that this might be perfectly normal because McAfee has no idea how much RAM any of its products use.
I explained that the problem was new, and that WebAdvisor obviously shouldn't be using over half my CPU cycles and 5GB of RAM (out of 8 total) when it really isn't supposed to be doing anything at all -- those numbers were with no browser running and no reason for ANY of my McAfee products to be doing anything besides resting in the background. No scan in progress, nothing being accessed, etc.
His immediate reaction was to ask for a remote control session so he could see where I was getting those numbers. I declined to give him remote control of my computer and explained: "I'm a bit reluctant to give you remote access because the last McAfee Tech Support representative that used remote access didn't even know what Windows 7 was, couldn't figure out an email program, and messed up several completely unrelated settings while trying to figure out why McAfee's default installation had it blocking all email in an email client that it doesn't support."
I would have sent him a screenshot of Windows Task Manager to show him the numbers, but of course McAfee's chat system doesn't support any sort of files or graphics.
His next thought was that the program might need updated. He suggested that I should download and reinstall WebAdvisor because the "last update" shown in the McAfee dashboard was 7/6/2021. I asked why that was a problem despite having automatic updates turned on in McAfee and I also used the "check for updates" which caused McAfee to show that it checked for updates, downloaded updates, and installed updates (all without changing the "last update" date shown). He explained that the Automatic Updates in McAfee total protection don't include updating WebAdvisor -- which struck me as running contrary to McAfee's claims that with auto updates turned on the customer doesn't need to do anything to keep their protection updated. His response was "i understand your frustration Thomas, but sadly i can't do anything in this case... :c"
I asked about how to stop McAfee WebAdvisor and his first idea was to just go to a browser, look for the Add-ins and turn McAfee WebAdvisor off. I explained that I had done that, but it made no difference because McAfee still loads WebAdvisor into memory even if it is disabled in the browsers and the WebAdvisor is consuming CPU time and RAM even when no browser is running.
He said I could go to Programs and uninstall WebAdvisor (which I haven't done yet, but probably will).
Finally, I asked for a transcript of the chat session (which I always do at the end of any chat session with any company's tech support or customer service). He took a few minutes to check before telling me that there was no way for him to send me a transcript of the chat session but that I could copy the session myself and save it in Word or Notes.
So, if anyone out there does know why McAfee WebAdvisor goes rogue and consumes over 50% of the CPU cycles and over 5GB of RAM, I'd love to hear about it -- and especially if anyone has a solution. By the way, this is an older Windows 7 desktop computer with a G620 CPU at 2.6GHz and 8GB total RAM. I haven't seen this problem occurring on either my Win 10 desktop or Win 11 laptop.
Hi @N4AOF
Greetings from McAfee
We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. kindly let us know the operating system version and the browser version your currently using and also let us know that you have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the WebAdvisor. If not kindly follow the below article to perform uninstall and reinstall.
How to disable or uninstall McAfee WebAdvisor
How to download and install McAfee WebAdvisor
Note : McAfee WebAdvisor supports only on Windows 11 , 10 , 8.1.
Regards,
Hari
New to the forums or need help finding your way around the forums? There's a whole hub of community resources to help you.
Thousands of customers use the McAfee Community for peer-to-peer and expert product support. Enjoy these benefits with a free membership: