Mac antivirus Software Issues [2009 Thread]

mario_c · Apr 30, 2009

When I'm not scribbling on AW my day job includes general customer support in the over 40 websites my company owns, and this includes supporting a PC antivirus / anti-sypware suite. So this is something I know a little about. That's why at home, I use Mac mostly

and PC occasionally.

I turn on my old Mac (I have 2 that share a monitor currently) and start celtx - nothing fancy, just some proofreading to do. Nothing - my computer locks up. I start Disk Utility and all permissions are OK, but celtx is still crawling along. So I check with Activity Monitor, and VShieldScanner (McAfee for Mac) has multiplied into about 7 instances. I hit Stop Process and the CPU goes crazy, the app starts reproducing itself and I have to reboot.
Maybe its time to reinstall, I think, so I look for VShield on my hard drive. No sign of it. No icon, no uninstaller. I even open Terminal and do the ls / thing, tunneling through the directory...nothing. (I don't remember how to search subfolders in bash - that doc was on my other computer, I believe.

) The only instance I can find is in the library, a .plist file - I threw it in the trash and the Mac is working fine for now. Has anyone had issues with this?
This is more of a rant than a question but any feedback is welcome. Thanks for reading this far.

selenawemiss · May 3, 2009

I don't really like using the anti virus things that scan for viruses for some reason (As well as the kind you download on the computer if you did that because they don't really work). I think you should uninstall your current Virus protector thing and get a up-to-date one at the store. They may be kind of expensive but they work.
To uninstall, do you try going to start and control panel? I don't know if Mac has it or not but windows has the control panel. If you can't find it still, does it have one of the uninstall buttons on the anti virus thing when you get on it?
Another thing may be is that you probably have too much stuff on your computer.

Deleted member 42 · May 3, 2009

mario_c said:
The only instance I can find is in the library, a .plist file - I threw it in the trash and the Mac is working fine for now. Has anyone had issues with this?
This is more of a rant than a question but any feedback is welcome. Thanks for reading this far.

I used to support McF for Mac OS X at UCLA as part of the UCLA site license.

There were similar problems almost every time Apple released an update, because McF did stupid things about threading.

The plist may have been corrupted; that can cause all sorts of problems--possibly make McF think that there was a problem.

I'd be curious to see if you have the same problem on a clean test account.

Unfortunately, I've as yet not found any OS X anti-virus application that I feel confident enough of to recommend. And pretty soon, we will need them, I'm afraid.

mario_c · May 4, 2009

Selena, you just go to the file in Applications / Utilities, and Move To Trash. That's a good point about the full hard drive, but mine is barely half full.

The cautionary saga continues - deleting .plist hasn't worked. Apparently it's caused by something called Virex, which is a (now discontinued) Mac security update. Next time I start the old Mac if the issues continue I can go in, hunt it down and delete it. I did delete something called ClamXAV which may contain the Virex program, and found more McAfee files to throw out (it took over an hour to do a search - annoying!)
But I was able to use it for its main purpose, recording my music demo. Yay!

Deleted member 42 · May 4, 2009

mario_c said:
Apparently it's caused by something called Virex, which is a (now discontinued) Mac security update. Next time I start the old Mac if the issues continue I can go in, hunt it down and delete it. I did delete something called ClamXAV which may contain the Virex program, and found more McAfee files to throw out (it took over an hour to do a search - annoying!)
But I was able to use it for its main purpose, recording my music demo. Yay!

Virex has an uninstaller; it installs numerous files, many of them invisible. You really do need the uninstaller.

mario_c · May 4, 2009

Grrrr. Thanks, Medievalist, good to know. I'm seeing the quality margin Mac sports over Windows get smaller and smaller...

Deleted member 42 · May 4, 2009

mario_c said:
Grrrr. Thanks, Medievalist, good to know. I'm seeing the quality margin Mac sports over Windows get smaller and smaller...

It is also a very bad idea to install more than one anti-virus program; they tend to view each other as possible hostiles.

dclary · May 4, 2009

I thought this was about a new program to keep Mac from interfering in our threads... ^_^

selenawemiss · May 4, 2009

mario_c said:
Selena, you just go to the file in Applications / Utilities, and Move To Trash. That's a good point about the full hard drive, but mine is barely half full.

The cautionary saga continues - deleting .plist hasn't worked. Apparently it's caused by something called Virex, which is a (now discontinued) Mac security update. Next time I start the old Mac if the issues continue I can go in, hunt it down and delete it. I did delete something called ClamXAV which may contain the Virex program, and found more McAfee files to throw out (it took over an hour to do a search - annoying!)
But I was able to use it for its main purpose, recording my music demo. Yay!

Oh. Okay. I thought that you most likely didn't hardly have anything on your hard drive or that it wasn't full. I was just making sure.
If you still have problems though, I would probably have someone come out and see whats wrong with it. If you don't have a lot of money, I know office depot cheeks your computer for free. And to fix it, it's Farly cheep. They only charged us to fix it for twenty dollars afterwords.
I would keep looking for McAfee files to throw out. I would also delete the Virex program because they discontinued it so I'm pretty sure something has to be wrong with the progrmam. If not, they just found something better and easyer to use.

laurette · Jun 25, 2010

another option

Maybe you should verify your computer or maybe you should install another antivirus to check all. Maybe this is the real problem; i would recommend you what i use and it makes me satisfied. Look at this http://www.trustdownload.com/Antivi...ntivirus/Kaspersky-Internet-Security-7.0.html

kuwisdelu · Jun 25, 2010

Eep.

I've always heard terrible things about McAfee for Mac screwing things up.

If you're having trouble tracking down the files and lost the uninstaller, try a little program called AppDelete.

Deleted member 42 · Jun 25, 2010

laurette said:
Maybe you should verify your computer or maybe you should install another antivirus to check all. Maybe this is the real problem; i would recommend you what i use and it makes me satisfied. Look at this http://www.trustdownload.com/Antivi...ntivirus/Kaspersky-Internet-Security-7.0.html

1. This is a thread from MAY of 2009.

2. You're suggesting a Windows program for a Mac; it won't work.

Elhrrah · Jun 25, 2010

Find yourself a solid third party uninstaller, preferably one specific to the antivirus software you're trying to unstall if that's at all possible, and grab one of the high-end antivirus suites; Sophos, for example.

Sophos should last you until you either find something free that floats your boat or bite the bullet and buy something like Nod32.

kuwisdelu · Jun 25, 2010

Medievalist said:
1. This is a thread from MAY of 2009.

Oops.

Mac antivirus Software Issues [2009 Thread]

mario_c

Your thoughts are not real...

selenawemiss

New kid, be gentle!

Deleted member 42

mario_c

Your thoughts are not real...

Deleted member 42

mario_c

Your thoughts are not real...

Deleted member 42

dclary

Unabashed Mercenary

selenawemiss

New kid, be gentle!

laurette

kuwisdelu

Revolutionize the World

Deleted member 42

Elhrrah

Summon Bigger Fish

kuwisdelu

Revolutionize the World