After posting my topic about being "hoodwinked" by McAfee into buying "McAfee AsaP," a product that I did not intend to purchase and one that I do *not* like, I am changing to Norton AntiVirus" software for our office.

In my thread posted earlier, many of you hated McAfee for both shady business practices and troublesome products.  If I remember correctly, I didn't get one positive response about McAfee.  

Anyway, several of you who prefer Norton AntiVirus suggested that if I change to Norton, that I should not install one of Norton's components.  Do any of you know what that component is?  And why is it not recommended for installation?  We have a small office, and I want to get started on the transition ASAP (not to be confused with McAfee's crappy product mentioned above).

In regard to being "hoodwinked" by McAfee... I believe in "buyer beware" just as much as the next guy... I shouldn't have fallen for their BS.  But I am changing to Norton just because of that very incident.  So maybe in a competitive environment, it should also be "seller beware."

McAfee    [50]

Thanks,

ARnSC

Just be sure you get rid of all the McAfee stuff on the computer before installing Norton.

MacAfee works good but getting rid of the stupid registry keys is a biotch. Some of them require going into Safe Mode. Download the detailed instructions from their website.

I used to hate Norton until recently. Their damn software used to try to take over too many important windows functions. Not good if you have a Scsi system. But not anymore.

Panda is supposed to be the best. I have it at work and it seems to be really good. It works in the background very transparently and automatically updates itself.

Thanks for the tips/advice to all of you.  Hmmm... I'll bet that *is* going to be a pain, I mean cleaning up all that registry stuff on each machines.  Glad I only have 10 pc's in that office!

Panda, eh Sodie?  Well, I might have to check that out.  I have always used McAfee at this office, but now I have no allegiance to any particular company.  I will check out Panda before ordering the Norton.

Thanks again!

ARnSC  [:D]

I suppose it was meant that you should install just Norton Antivirus and nothing else, like Personal Firewall, Utilities, and what not.

Norton AntiVirus is very heavy.  It sucks up your CPU/memory. I use AVAST! (free antivirus)
and its very nice.  I also have experience with Computer Associates' InoculateIT Personal Edition.  I think now its called ETrust EZ antivurs but I highly recommend this one too!

I recently dumped McAfee myself after I discovered the SubSeven backdoor trojan on my system.  Somehow it got through McAfee AND my firewall!  It was a pain to clean up, but I immediately went out and got Norton Internet Security with Norton Antivirus.  My system is clean as a whistle now.  I highly recommend Norton.

This is my personal opinion but McAfee sucks.  I've tried their antivirus as well as their firewall program.  Everytime I tried McAfee, I found it to be highly reliable.  Never had problems with NAV, and InoculateIT.  But NAV was really bogging my system down, specially when used in conjuction with Norton Utilities.

I changed from McAfee AV and Firewall to Norton AV and ZoneAlarm a couple days before the Klez virus started.  Norton allows my machine to run MUCH faster.  My wife told me it would as several of her friends run Norton but would I listen??  NOOOOOO!  Big hotshot computer guy KNEW McAfee was working OK.  Decided to give Norton a try based on comments you guys made.  BEST THING I'VE DONE FOR MY COMPUTER SINCE I BOUGHT IT!  Every function from boot to shutdown runs noticeably FASTER.  Not just a little faster.  McAfee was also buggy on shutdown and that problem went away too.

You might think about trying AVG Anti-virus software, from www.grisoft.com it's great. I work for a School system, as a comtech, that has about 1000 Computers an AVG is what we went to for our virus software.I,ve used both Norton And McAfee I like Avg Much better And they also have a free edition that is great.

[:D]

Hmmm... lots-o-choices!  I really do appreciate the tips though.  How about Graffiti's statement about Norton hogging up memory?  Our PC's at this office are not state of the art (understatement!).  They run from 350Mz to 800Mz with at least 128MB of memory in most.  One or two have 512MB memory.  Do you guys think that's enough to handle Norton?  

I will probably have to make a decision today.  Fortunately most of my users are out of the office for most of this week, because McAfee has now stopped "pushing" SuperDats and updates to me via SecureCast (part of their plot to get me to purchase their stuff again, or am I just paranoid?).  

We are about two weeks behind on virus definitions (DAT).  So I will have to decide today and have whatever I buy overnighted to me.

Thanks again for the tips, and if you have any more, please keep 'em coming.  [:)]

Ooops, dont know if anyone caught it but I meant to say that McAfee is highly unreliable.
I was using McAfee in my Win95 and Win98 days.  Haven't tried it on WinME and Win2K machine. You gotta buy new antivirus (1year virus def renewal) every year.  So I'll go with E-trust because its the cheapest.  See the link below.

[url]http://antivirus.cai.com[/url]

This one is free for personal use.
[url]http://www.avast.com/[/url]

Both of those are certified by ICSA Labs for its effectiveness.
[url]http://www.icsalabs.com/html/communities/antivirus/certifiedproducts.shtml[/url]

Hey, I just wanted to thank you all again for your help with this antivirus software thing.  I just purchased Norton Corp. Edition 7.6 for this office.  And Graffiti, I hope that I have enough memory in some of these old PC's to handle it.  If not, I'll have to spend some more of the boss's money!  [:D]

We just switched from McAfee to Norton in our school district.

Techs love it since it is easy to manage.

Teacher like it since it does not crash the computers all the time.

Kids like it since McAfee is NOT compatible wiht all educational software (e-mail me if you want a list of what we found).

We have 1,800 PC's in 11 locations.

Av.

Too bad I missed that thread.  First let me say that everyone pronounces it wrong.  People like to say mu-CALF-fee, but it's actually pronounced MAC-a-fee.  I met John McAfee in person years ago and that's how he pronounced it, and he should know.  [;)]

When John was running the company, McAfee was a good product.  But he sold out to investors a long time ago (took the money and ran!), and now McAfee AV is a total piece of shit.  The "Virus Shield" that runs in your System Tray is particularly bad, causing all sorts of lock-ups, crashes, and BSODs.  (Sorry if this was covered in the last thread.)

The bottom line is avoid McAfee like the plague!!

Norton AV 2002, OTOH, is a good product, though somewhat bloated.  Of course, all the defaults during installation load crap that runs in the background, nags you about updating daily, etc.  I turn all that crap off.  My advice is only let it monitor your email.  Then once a week or so do a Live Update and full system scan, but be sure to set it for "Scan all Files" instead of just the executables (the default) and you'll be ok.

Speaking of Anti-Virus, if anyone knows who [email protected] is, take your favorite AR-15A2 and buttstroke that fuckwad upside the head!!  For the last couple of week he's been sending me the Klez Virus a couple times a day.  I really wish morons like [email protected] would get a clue.

Thanks Steel_Rat... a lot of people in this neck of the woods pronounce McAfee like that too.  But the people at McAfee pronounce it MAC-a-fee.  So I guess the people who pronounce it wrong have never even dialed 'em up.  But since you got the pronounciation from Mr. McAfee "hisself," that does it for me.  The man certainly would know how to pronounce his own name.  

My Norton CE 7.6 is arriving tomorrow for the entire office (small 10-user license), so I am on McAfee's site now trying to get some tips for a clean uninstall before installing Norton.

You are right too in saying that McAfee used to be a good product.  After NAI got it from whoever they bought it from, it really sucked for a while.  But they improved it and it filled the bill for a few years.  But now that they screwed me by selling me McAfee AsaP and cut off my updates to v4.5.1, they can kiss my butt.  They screwed me out of the $699 for AsaP, but that's the last penny they'll ever get from this company.

I appreciate the heads-up on (not) installing the default features with Norton.  That's why I don't like Norton Utilities anymore... it pestered the heck out of me every day for this and that.  I just want the damn thing to run quietly and efficiently in the background.

Thanks again.

McAfee sucks. They even dumped most of their PGP product line (but still maintain it)...

Thanks Energizer...  I find it pretty interesting that, in neither this post nor my one a while back, did *anyone* have anything good to say about McAfee (except back in the days when the original owner ran it).

I am a bit embarrassed to say it, but I was, for the most part, fairly happy with McAfee.  As long as I kept my virus definition (DAT) files up to date, McAfee seemed to do a good job of catching bugs before they could inflict any harm.  It has saved us many, many times in the past.

But although it will just be more work for me, I am looking forward to checking out Norton.  It must be *way* better than McAfee.

Thanks again.

Norton isn't all that great either. It has problems scanning, as well as ruining CDRs!!! To burn a CDR, I would have to uninstall Norton (not disable it) to keep it from trashing my CDRs.

FYI: I had McAfee on my new Sony last August. It came with the machine. The machine had so many problems, from not booting up A LOT, crashing and hanging all the time, rebooting for no reason, going really slow, etc. McAfee would not help with their support, even though I get 4 months of free updates and 1 year of DAT files. They would not give them to me (but I got them from work), and their was a bug that caused it to expire when I first booted the NEW machine, and they wouldn't fix it even though Sony acknowledged the bug!!! Once I deleted it from my system, things have been MUCH BETTER (no more boot-up problems), but I still have occasional problems since it is Windows ME.


Edited to say: I don't use virus protection at home. Most new viruses are not detected by scanners anyway, so why bother spending the money when you will get infected anyway? --and it slows down your system to scan everything you do. If you get a virus, get the free cleanup utility... (Also, most servers these days scan your emails and attachments for potential viruses (of course the SCRs still got through Yahoo recently, but I deleted them). Just be your own detector: don't run scripts, batch files, SCRs, EXEs, COMs, etc.)

I started with F-Prot, then went the route of McAfee to Norton, to others.

Finally went back to [url=www.f-prot.com]F-Prot[/url] for personal use.

The fun part is I still only use the DOS version! I am careful of my net actvities and only need to scan when I download something. The DOS version is simple and very reliable and FREE.

F-Prot has versions for Windows, DOS, and [b]Linux[/b].

Plus I love their pricing!
Comercial users: Annual license 21-2,500 computers      $2.00* per computer

Those days are over. Besides the classic way of catching a virus by using someone's floppies or opening and running a program attached to an e-mail message, you can now indeed catch yourself a nasty bug by merely browsing webpages or just looking at a an e-mail without opening any attachment.
Cf. Code Red, Nimda, Klez and others.
Don't feel too safe.

Pretty interesting Troy... Well, I have shutdown problems on every PC in the office from time to time.  All McAfee could do was recommend that I disable "Scan Floppies on Shutdown," which I did.  But the machines still didn't shut down properly... AND.... even though "Scan Floppies on Shutdown" was disabled, I could still hear it kick off the floppy drive during shutdown.

Hopefully Norton will be better.  At least I will have *new* (i.e. "different") problems and issues to deal with.  McAfee was starting to irritate me even before they screwed us out of the $$$.

Jeez, Energizer... I just purchased a new Plextor SCSI burner yesterday.  We depend on CD burning pretty heavily, so I hope Norton won't mess that up.  If it interferes with my burner, I will just have to return it for a refund.  Or maybe it won't mess with the CD-ROM drives since they are both SCSI.

You never know-- I do know that it also depended on which operating system you used, and what hardware was installed. (Could have been a conflict with the USB driver too...)

That's what I want to know.  I was running NeoWatch for my firewall, configured properly, I have no doubt of that.  And my McAfee dats were always up to date.  I'm a fanatic about that.  I never download unknown crap to my computer, and I scan everything I do download for viruses.  Still somehow, the SOB's managed to get that SubSeven through.  This totally ticked me off, so I dumped McAfee and NeoWatch and switched to Norton.  It really seems to be on its toes.  So far, I'm very happy with it.

Ok, just one more question about Norton.  I received our Norton AV CD and licenses today, and I installed it on my PC (That was all I had time to do).  Looks pretty clean and doesn't seem to bog the PC down as much as McAfee did.  But... and maybe you guys/gals can tell me...  In the past, with McAfee, I could do a Ctrl+Alt+Del on a Win98 machine and see both McAfee VirusScan and the VirusShield (that icon in the systray) running.  After installing Norton, I don't see anything running.  Is it running?  How do I know?  Of course, being a guy, I haven't read a damn word of any manual, etc., but I may tomorrow.  I just want to be sure it's running in the backgroud.  Maybe it runs as a service?

Thanks,

Thanks Troy... well, I did the reboot and I ran the live update.  But I didn't see an icon in the tray, nor did I see any "NAVxxxxx" processes.  I was in a hurry to get out of the office and probably just didn't see them, or maybe I need to do a bit of configuring.  I did install the Realtime protection thing, so it should be running.  I'll play with it more tomorrow.

Thanks again for the tip.

Well, true. But you CAN minimize the possiblity. One, don't set you e-mail to have a preview pane. When in doubt with an e-mail, delete. I still need to migrate off of Outlook (full).

Browseing, use some common sence. Don't go looking for warez via web pages, sure fire way of getting nailed. If you do, make sure your browser is secured (no java, deny cookies, no active X, etc)

Nimda, Code Red, etc... DON'T INSTALL IIS!!! Damn it people, if you don't need it, don't install it!! (one reason I quit my old job, wouldn't listen to me about IIS. My boxes went through that without a problem, others didn't, I had to clean up their mess). I helped Beta test IIS, thought it was cool at first. But started to see the problems, then I ran as fast as I could from it.

With IIS, remove/disable any service that you don't need. SNMP, FTP, Telnet, Remote Registry service, Task scheduler, etc.

Patch your systems. Come on, go to the manufactures web site, and run the updates. Look and read the security issues, patch approprately.

Get a hardware base router/firewall for your internet connection. Linksys, Cisco, NetGear, 3Com, etc. This is important for "always on" connections, Cable, DSL. Plus it allows you to have mulitple machines online but pay for one IP address. A win-win investment.

I hate to brag, but in 15 years plus of being in the IT field, my personal systems (home and work), and the servers that I have professionaly maintained have all been virus/hack free. Some have been targeted, but none have been compromised. (now watch in the next week I get nailed, after saying this).

It all is the same thing in real life. You wouldn't go down to the barrio, slink around the back alleys without some situatational awareness and personal protection. Same thing on the net.

-Play hard, play safe.

For what it's worth, norton may have had something to do with my previous hard drive going bad.

Well, I have finally gotten my Norton stuff installed.  We only have two servers at this location and 10 workstations.  So I ran out of licenses (2 servers + 8 workstations=10, which is the number of licenses that I bought), so I will have to buy another 5 licenses for this location.

Anyway I had some funkiness on a couple of installs, but nothing significant. The biggest headache was getting all references to McAfee out of the registry.  Just had to sit down and work my way through each PC's registry.

I set the office up using the Symantec System Center (SSC) on an NT PDC and made the other server (Win2K)a secondary Norton server.  Once I do the live update, SSC updates all the workstations by itself.  So far it looks pretty damned cool.

I think I have been living in the "dark ages" with McAfee.  This Norton Corporate Edition 7.6 is lightyears ahead of McAfee.  AND... and this is certainly a plus.  I had a couple of PC's that were *extremely* slow to boot... sticky mouse cursors for several minutes before the boot/system settled down.  Removing McAfee eliminated all that.  Also, the PC's all shut down now like they are supposed to.  With McAfee I always had one or two per day that wouldn't shut down.

I hate to badmouth McAfee.  As clunky as their product was (I can see that now), it has saved our butts scores of times over the past few years.  But they had better spiff up their product if they plan to compete with Norton, IMHO.  

Maybe in a few months, I'll discover that Norton isn't all that it is supposed to be.  But for now I am a happy camper.  [:D]

You might want to take a look at Ghost. We use it here at the school district.

When we switched from McAfee to Norton, we made new fresh images of all our computer models.

Rolled out the new image, and WOW! No more McAfee. No need to sit around and try to uninstall software. Just update the image, or make an all new one if the change is really big.

Av.

Thanks Av... yeah that image thing is the way to go, especially if you have tons of PC's.

As of now I am still (knock on wood) *very* happy with my new Norton installs. Not only has it all but eliminated the shutdown issues that we had, but today I printed off a ton of incoming documents for our company and did *not* have one spooler32 error.  I suspected that McAfee was the culprit behind the spooler errors, and now that certainly seems to be the case.

If Norton doesn't do the trick, I'll check out your suggestion.  Thanks again.  [8D]