McAfee VirusScan Plus Review - Alcatraz Security
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2007 Antivirus Review

McAfee VirusScan Plus

McAfee VirusScan Plus includes Anitivirus, Antispyware, and Firewall. In this review we only reviewed the antivirus ability.

Installation:
McAfee allows complete or custom installation methods as it offers a plethora of utilities under one package. For our test we choose custom, and selected only VirusScan. The Security Center installation is required along with VirusScan as it acts as the central management hub for all the McAfee security products and updates you have installed on your computer. It also installs OEM support, which helps interpret what other protection you have running, so McAfee can correctly alert you of you potential vulnerabilities and recommend further hardening of your computer.

By default it adds a desktop icon, and send scanning detection, firewall and product data anonymously to McAfee. Although I don’t like sending information from my computer (reason we’re installing protection) I understand this is used for statistical information to improve future releases and products.

The last step of the installation is registration, which McAfee requires before you can receive any updates, including virus definition files. Once registered the program will automatically update the VirusScan product without any manual intervention if an active Internet connection is available. The installation is straight forward, requiring minimum intervention and technical feedback.

Configuration:
After the installation, as part of the configuration process, a red/white ribbon icon appears in your taskbar indicated you are not fully protected. Double clicking on the icon will bring you to the McAfee Security Center that shows you why you are not fully protected. You can correct the problem easily by just clicking a fix button. For us this appeared because we choose not to install the firewall and none was running. McAfee indicated we could turn this alert off by selecting 'ignore problem' which was very nice and easy to figure out.

The configuration is set tight, with automatic updates turned on by default. The alert option was a bit much for us, but some might appreciate it as it is set to alert when a public virus outbreak or security threat occurs, and shows information alerts when gaming mode is detected, and displays a McAfee splash screen when windows starts up to ensure you it's running. All can be turned off in the advanced options easily.

Real-time scanning is turned on, including scans for unknown viruses using heuristics. It also automatically sets up a scheduled scan weekly.


Resources:
This is the main area of complaint with McAfee. With is strong artillery, comes heavy resource utilization with a case of system processes running in the background. We identified fifteen background processes using a total of 142mb! Ouch. It took 38mb of hard drive space, and the mcmods.exe process used 94% processor utilization, on average, to complete a full system scan of our 5.8gig drive in total of twenty minutes.

Emproxy.exe 4.1mb
Hwapi.exe 11.3mb
Mcagent.exe 9mb
Mclogsrv.exe 3.8mb
Mcnasvc.exe 9.8mb
Mcods.exe 6.8mb
Mcpromgr.exe 13.9mb
Mcshield.exe 32mb
Mctskshd.exe 3.2mb
Mcsysmon.exe 9.4mb
Mcuimgr.exe 6mb
Mcupdmgr.exe 14mb
Mcupdui.exe 9mb
Mcusrmgr.exe 6.6mb
Redirsvc.exe 5.3mb

Ability:
McAfee VirusScan 2007 stopped all ten viruses in real-time before they made it to the hard drive. McAfee has always been solid at virus detection and erradication.
  Real-TimeFull Scan
CyberTake Backdoor
Yes
NA
CryptoC Virus
Yes
NA
Ghostdog DoS Yes NA
Popcorn Exploit
Yes NA
WebHack Hack Yes NA
Sinmsn IM Worm
Yes NA
Bacterio61 Trojan
Yes NA
Diablo21 Trojan
Yes NA
VChain Virus
Yes NA
Foxma Worm
Yes NA
(Real-Time: This is the preferred detection method. The virus was stopped as it entered the computer, before it planted itself onto any media such as the hard drive. Full Scan: The virus planted itself onto the media of the computer such as a folder on the hard drive and was found during a scheduled Full Scan. NA means the Full Scan was not needed.)

Support:
Online Wizard, Free Chat and Email Support. $39.95 for phone support.

Price:
$39.99 for a 1 year subscription to VirusPlus, or
$49.99 for McAfee Internet Security Suite

Other Notes:
The 'Manage Network' option was very nice to tell McAfee Security Center to trust other computers on the network. It also includes a 'shredder' utility under the tools options that permanently erases files, folders and data for you. The program also includes a neat virus map function, and a 'System Restore' utility that works with Microsoft restore points to help you recover from an outage.

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Comments

Reply 2024-11-17 21:45:56 by irv
McAfee support is terrible. My subscription was discontinued even though I paid for it. It could not be re-instated by McAfee. I just got ridiculous e-mails in response.

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