McAfee, Vshield & Clogged CPU

[jstackpo]

If I load, at startup, McAfee's Vshield, all is initially well. But as time goes on the CPU usage climbs and climbs until the mouse gets jerky, everything slows down, etc. and disk i/o skyrockets along with CPU usage. 4 or 5 hours of routine use (surfing, e-mail, word processing, nothing special) is all it takes. I can remove all visible running codes and the CPU usage stays high. (I "see" CPU usage via MemTurbo). ReBoot and it starts over. This either started, or got noticeably worse, last week with an upgrade of the "engine" to 4.1.50. If Vshield is not loaded, then all is smooth all day long.
Anybody else see this? Curable? (I feel a little naked running without the virus checking in place.)
John

[DaveA]

You have just out why a lot of us will not use McAfee's. Get ret of it, I use Norton's 2002

[VBNerd]

We gave up on McAfee at my work because of that very problem. It seems to behave in Win NT & Win 2000 machines, but not Win 98 machines. We've since switched to Sophos which seems stay out of the way. I'm thinking about getting PC-cillen for home use.

[Keely]

Better than Norton is Trend Micro's <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.antivirus.com/pc-cillin/products/pcc2000.htm>PC-Cillin 2000</A>. Manual scans are 50% faster than Norton, and requires only 1.5 MB of memory as opposed to Norton's 5.0 MB. Despite having been around since 1988, TM doesn't have the market share that Norton and McAfee do it seems solely because they didn't pursue cozy OEM deals like the big two. No financial or other interest in the company, just someone who has spent way too much time dealing with the problems McAfee and Norton cause.

[jstackpo]

Now you have scared me...

Problems with Norton, too? (Other than the slow scans that you mention?)

JDS

[Keely]

Both Norton and McAfee have given me problems on a number of computers with failed updates, often requiring a complete install of the product (and then the 65 or so attendant patches required to get it updated to the present). And because both drastically drain system resources, they in essence cause other applications and Windows itself (when running a 9x version) to crash.

I have not been using PC-Cillin for long on many systems, but have been pleased with the results on the three W2K machines I have it running on currently. Time will tell, but there has GOT to be something better than the big two, which seem to me to be nothing but <img src=/S/rubbish.gif border=0 alt=rubbish width=15 height=15>.

[aussiegran]

I too have had major problems with McAfee and Norton. Now me and many of my friends around the world use AVG. It's free from www.grisoft.com. Not 100% sure if it's free for commercial use though. It has picked up the latest viruses without any problems.

[ilona53]

Nothing wrong with Norton and doing its' 'slow scans'..it just does a thorough check of what you want it to check. McAfee is the worst thing to have...if you do decide to get rid of it, make sure all references of McAfee is deleted from system. I believe McAfee has a certain link for those wanting to uninstall all traces of their antivirus product.