McAffee Seems to be Blocking Attempts to Download Other Anti-Virus Programs!

[newtekie1]

The story: I'm setting up two new Dell laptops that were bought this week(Dell Inspiron 13 7000 for anyone interested).

Once I made it to a usable desktop, I start my normal routine:
Install Chrome - Goes Smoothly
Install ClassicShell - Goes Smoothly
Uninstall Bundled McAffee AV - Goes Smoothly
Use Chrome to Go Download Avast - Here is where the issue begins

So, when I'm on Avast's website, everything seems normal until I click the download button. The "your download will start shortly" page loads. But right when the download should start the Chrome tab just closes. WTF? Maybe it is a fluke, so I try again, nope same problem. I think, Ok, I'll try AVG. Again, some problem. I try Edge, nope same problem. Then I notice that McAffee WebAdviser is installed. Even in Chrome, despite Chrome not being pre-installed on the laptop. I remove McAfee WebAdviser from Chrome and sure enough, Avast downloads exactly as expected. So I completely uninstall McAffee WebAdviser, not sure how I missed it when I uninstall the main McAffee program, I was kind of rushed to get these laptops done. But it annoys me that McAffee WebAdviser is blocking the downloads of competitor's Anti-Virus programs.

It makes me wonder if it is even legal for a bundled program to attempt to stop the use of a competitor's software, especially without even a warning message or anything. I guess I would be a little less mad if it popped up a message warning that the file download was blocked, but WebAdviser just completely closes the tab with no message or warning.

 

[hat]

Well, that's certainly interesting. Especially since most users would just give up and say "well I guess I'll just use mcaffe then". Perhaps that's exactly their goal, get more mcaffe users by blocking the others in a way that's not so obvious to the average user.

 

[natr0n]

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/mcafee_consumer_product_removal_tool.html

 

[er557]

If true, completely outrageous. Some AV block as riskware or PUWA the apps they don't like, not clean-heartedly. Like access to complete websites if those forums offer activation circumvention methods, and so forth. The big corporations definition of "potentially unwanted software" or "potentially unsafe applications" is moot at best. One has to figure out on his own the false positives

 

[eidairaman1]

Sometimes the cure is worse than the infection.

In this instance, I'd remove everything of mcafee, purge the registry too. The Guy is a wack job now.

1 thing there are virus that mask themselves as an antivirus too.

I use Avast, Malwarebytes, Super AntiSpyware, Spywareblaster

 

[er557]

Yeah, of course there's those "windows security system" infections, but mcaffee? I know avg used to take heat for in product aggressive advertising and being resource heavy, and I don't speak about comodo, good luck with that

 

[Readlight]

i don't use any antivirus i don't need anything to slow down disk usage. if something happens reinstall window.

 

[Arctucas]

And this happens with any web browser?

 

[Solaris17]

The story: I'm setting up two new Dell laptops that were bought this week(Dell Inspiron 13 7000 for anyone interested).

Once I made it to a usable desktop, I start my normal routine:
Install Chrome - Goes Smoothly
Install ClassicShell - Goes Smoothly
Uninstall Bundled McAffee AV - Goes Smoothly
Use Chrome to Go Download Avast - Here is where the issue begins

So, when I'm on Avast's website, everything seems normal until I click the download button. The "your download will start shortly" page loads. But right when the download should start the Chrome tab just closes. WTF? Maybe it is a fluke, so I try again, nope same problem. I think, Ok, I'll try AVG. Again, some problem. I try Edge, nope same problem. Then I notice that McAffee WebAdviser is installed. Even in Chrome, despite Chrome not being pre-installed on the laptop. I remove McAfee WebAdviser from Chrome and sure enough, Avast downloads exactly as expected. So I completely uninstall McAffee WebAdviser, not sure how I missed it when I uninstall the main McAffee program, I was kind of rushed to get these laptops done. But it annoys me that McAffee WebAdviser is blocking the downloads of competitor's Anti-Virus programs.

It makes me wonder if it is even legal for a bundled program to attempt to stop the use of a competitor's software, especially without even a warning message or anything. I guess I would be a little less mad if it popped up a message warning that the file download was blocked, but WebAdviser just completely closes the tab with no message or warning.

unfortunetly this is common. Though the professional in me likes to belive (and hasnt found yet) a correlation between the oddeties many of them do have them. I can list a few.

Kaspersky (firwall functions after lic expires (this breaks wifi printers generally))
AVG (wont uninstall all subsystems (though this was an older vesion dont see it alot anymore))
Vipre (no uninstall tool, if the uninstall breaks you must do everything via registry and commands availible on there site engineers wouldnt help (even though I have thousands of seats))
Sophos (personally like them but brings browser experiences of any type too an absolute stand still)
Emsisoft (another personal and professional advocate but sometimes when doing core version upgrades pukes itself)

I cant remember any more ATM and im not really dissing them iv also personally seen hundreds of examples of each one (I play with alot of defense and forensic software for school and work) work totally fine including mcafee

outside of odd problems specific to there own flavors iv not met one that likes being anywhere near another endpoint software. Vipre and emsisoft for example will either straight refuse to install or remove the other program automatically (how thoughtful)

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Installing a browser by a company that sells personal information for profit... I dont give a shit, its still funny as hell to think this.

I assume the McAfee was preinstalled, are these your laptops for personal use. If they are, I'd find a way to remove it from recovery like when editing the old windows install discs. I've removed programs from the recovery hard disks a very long time ago, but I am unsure if its done the same anymore.

 

[revin]

, and I don't speak about comodo, good luck with that

Huh ? I've used Comodo for over a decade and never had an issue .... just need to set up the whole suite and it's golden !
Sandbox is extremely useful and Comodo can lock down the whole system to ask to grant any permissions while learning what you want to allow.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Huh ? I've used Comodo for over a decade and never had an issue .... just need to set up the whole suite and it's golden !
Sandbox is extremely useful and Comodo can lock down the whole system to ask to grant any permissions while learning what you want to allow.

if you cant run all the components of a suite individually, its garbage. Brand names mean squat except for earning loyalty so that when issues do pop up they get ignored because koolaid tastes great.

 

[revin]

if you cant run all the components of a suite individually, its garbage

What ? You can turn On or OFF Firewall, Sandbox ,Hips , Virtual Desktop, Containment each individually not sure where your trying to go with this
Not sure why some of the best features would want to be turned off tho.
But to each there own so it's not for you but with a little work it's a fantastic well mannered program that has a lot to offer for Free

 

[qubit]

@newtekie1 Why am I not surprised that McAfee is misbehaving like this?

I've seen some bad stuff from their products, too.

The one I remember clearly was one time about 4 years ago. I went to a client's house where they had an ancient Pentium 4 PC connected to the internet that they just used for browsing. Old, but functional for the job (still had XP though...) The thing was barely able to pull down a web page, with it often getting stuck half way, or erroring out. It had installed on it McAfee Crapware courtesy of BT internet. I didn't even have to uninstall it for the PC to function properly. Simply selecting the disable McAfee option in the menu was enough to restore normal, if slightly slow, web browsing. Turning it on again killed it again, so no doubt that this was the culprit.

5 minutes later this McAfee Crapware was gone and I'd installed one of the free a/v programs, could have been Avast.

What gets me is that being bought out by Intel didn't do anything for the product. You'd think after paying millions for this piece of shit, the parent company would want to transform it into a quality product, wouldn't you? Doesn't look like Intel cares though.

 

[Red_Machine]

I just tried this myself. Using Firefox with McAfee WebAdvisor and McAfee AntiVirus Plus. No issue downloading either AVG or Avast.

 

[eidairaman1]

I just tried this myself. Using Firefox with McAfee WebAdvisor and McAfee AntiVirus Plus. No issue downloading either AVG or Avast.

Cool story, ymmv on this

 

[newtekie1]

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/mcafee_consumer_product_removal_tool.html

I use that a lot, but recently it hasn't been necessary. They have done a pretty good job of cleaning up after themselves when you uninstall it the normal way through control panel. I only need the removal tool these days if the uninstallation screws up somehow.

In this instance, I'd remove everything of mcafee, purge the registry too. The Guy is a wack job now.

He hasn't had anything to do with the company in years. Intel owns McAffee now. And up until today they seem to have been moving in the right direction with it. But this is a huge step backwards.

i don't use any antivirus i don't need anything to slow down disk usage. if something happens reinstall window.

And it is nice that that works for you. But I'm not going to give a computer that I configured to another person without AV on it. It is just stupid not to run an AV.

Installing a browser by a company that sells personal information for profit... I dont give a shit, its still funny as hell to think this.

I have a Facebook account. You think I care if Google is selling the list of nasty twisted porn sites I visit?

What gets me is that being bought out by Intel didn't do anything for the product. You'd think after paying millions for this piece of shit, the parent company would want to transform it into a quality product, wouldn't you? Doesn't look like Intel cares though.

I thought that once they got it to the point that it would gracefully uninstall that they were on the right track, but not after today. I'm hoping though that this was just an unintentional issue, but I'm also not holding my breath.

 

[biffzinker]

Intel spun off Mcafee in late 2016 in a $4.2 billion deal. However at the time it was reported Intel still owned 49%.
http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-spins-off-mcafee-2016-9

 

[qubit]

Intel spun off Mcafee in late 2016 in a $4.2 billion deal. However at the time it was reported Intel still owned 49%.
http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-spins-off-mcafee-2016-9

Maybe that's why they didn't care about it.

 

[er557]

What ? You can turn On or OFF Firewall, Sandbox ,Hips , Virtual Desktop, Containment each individually not sure where your trying to go with this
Not sure why some of the best features would want to be turned off tho.
But to each there own so it's not for you but with a little work it's a fantastic well mannered program that has a lot to offer for Free

How is comodo on resources? iirc ESET SMART SECURITY is the most complete package with firewall that is the lowest system hog of all, plus unlike comodo It does not nag you constantly to authorize what you are doing in the background

 

[revin]

Very Light. Uses about 25k, another 10k with Viruscope and Auto Containment can set FW , HIPS to "Safe Mode" and it will rarely ask about something. There is "Learning" that will ask the first time's about Allow or Deny, and then you can even Lock down the system with "Paranoid" it will ask about everything. Once a couple week's you can go back thru the various feature's and review if you want to change the "rules" of something that was auto contained sandboxed. There is great tutorials online to help understand and setup the features.

 

[er557]

Few people seem to think so:
https://malwaretips.com/threads/comodo-internet-security-8-vs-eset-smart-security-9.61444/

 

[newtekie1]

Few people seem to think so:
https://malwaretips.com/threads/comodo-internet-security-8-vs-eset-smart-security-9.61444/

Dude, you are linking to an article from 2 years ago...

ESET isn't free from its problems either. I've experiences quite a few from it over the years. Example: For a while it had this nasty bug where whenever it couldn't update for whatever reason, it would just write a log file to a certain hidden directory under the Windows folder.(Why is it even writing logs to the Windows directory, that's a big no-no.) It would never delete these logs, so it would slowly fill up the drive. You can imagine this actually filled up pretty quickly in machines that only had 60-120GB SSD. I saw it write 1GB of log files in just an hour of the internet being down. And, of course, because it was under the Windows folder, most people were freaked out about deleting anything in there.

Plus, its not free. For a paid solution, there are definitely better options out there. But you're comparing it to Comodo, which is free, and today ESET isn't really any better than Comodo even though Comodo is free.

And the days of complaining about anti-viruses taking up resources should be dead. Unless the AV is particularly bad at it, computers now are powerful enough that the resources used by the AV isn't noticeable. So unless you are running some really old/weak hardware, the AV resource usage doesn't really matter. Anything with a decently modern dual-core and 4GB of RAM, won't really be affected by the load of any decent AV.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I have a Facebook account. You think I care if Google is selling the list of nasty twisted porn sites I visit?

Its a matter of principle. Google may or may not be profiting from your choices, you are not even in the loop, your choice has been taken away.

btw, nasty and twisted is good!

What ? You can turn On or OFF Firewall, Sandbox ,Hips , Virtual Desktop, Containment each individually not sure where your trying to go with this
Not sure why some of the best features would want to be turned off tho.
But to each there own so it's not for you but with a little work it's a fantastic well mannered program that has a lot to offer for Free

Obviously you missed the point of what I was saying, I wont explain it.

 

[newtekie1]

Its a matter of principle. Google may or may not be profiting from your choices, you are not even in the loop, your choice has been taken away.

btw, nasty and twisted is good!

The choice hasn't been taken away. That is false logic. I choose to use their products, that is the choice. If I didn't want them to profit from selling my information, I wouldn't use their products.

And there are plenty of other companies that do the same thing. I get so much spam from advertisers that "somehow" got my email address and even phone number it isn't fun. Every time you sign up for a website that is offering something for free, there is a good chance that website is making a profit by selling the information you give it. But at this point, the information they are asking is likely already public information anyway, so I don't care. If someone wants to know my address, my phone number, my email address, it is all already public information.