Topic Title

My Norton AV subscription was running out and didn't work for me (a Dell vs automatic update conflict) so I decided to try McAfee Internet Security Suite this time. I like the way it kills spam, no problems ( that I know of ) with firewall and anti-virus ware, don't like that I have to sign on to it to get on the internet every time (their privacy software), but am having a problem. My task manager shows that every 7 seconds my cpu goes to 60% to 70% usage instead of the usual 5% to 7%. A couple of long phonecalls to McAfee resulted in my having to uninstall the spamkiller (some conflict with other firewalls etc). True, that stopped the 7 second problem, but I paid for the anti-spam ability so did a partial install to put it back in and the 7 sec workload has resumed. It is evidenced by a flickering hourglass at the cursor for a half second in any program, very annoying. Anyone else with this problem? I'm on XP, have turned off the XP firewall, but have Microsoft AV, SpyBot also running.

Dwight:

This is a well known problem with McAfee SpamKiller and has been well documented not only on Usenet but McAfee's own support sight as well. The problem is that there is no fix for it.

To fight against Spam, server-side filtering is the only way to go. Both MessageLabs and Brightmail do excellent spam-filtering both direct-to-the-public or (normally cheaper) via ISPs reselling their services. Ask your ISP if they offer any Spam filtering services.

Personally, I use my own filtering recipe on our mail server, but I'm just special like that. To even connect to DCAD's mail server you have to run several gauntlets, and then you've got the spamtraps, RBL lookups and heuristics (which feed internal blacklists) that must be traversed in order to get through. I have managed to decrease our to-the-desktop Spam by better than 90%.

Do bear in mind that with *any* spam-filtering you *will* get false-positives - it's just part of the territory. However, sane filtering rules will mean that the false positives aren't *too* false - a bit of education for the sender will generally clean things right up.

Dave

but I'm just special like that.
Dave

Yes.
Yes you are.
So special, I'm letting everyone in our office know that today is Dave Giesselman Day. They will all look at me funny and ask who that is, but I'll know. I'll always know.
(Think I needed more sleep last night....)

Hello Dwight:

I would highly recommend AVG antivirus, MailWasher, and Sygate firewall. They are all well designed, they work very well, and they "play nice" together. AVG steps very lightly, MailWasher give you the ultimate control, and Sygate is the best firewall program that I know off.

I agree with Neil on the suggestions of AVG anti-virus and Mailwasher. Ever since I started using Mailwasher about two years ago, I have had no spam or viruses even get close to my e-mail program. I installed the free version of AVG last night on my daughters computer, that had McAfee on it, and it discovered lots of Trojan Horses and a couple of viruses. It safely dumped them and all is well again. You can find AVG and Mailwasher at www.grisoft.com.

I had McAfee on my computer a long time ago, I got a virus, it asked if it sould clean it, i clicked yes and BOTH of my HDD's were gone. I lost everything, this is back when CD burners were new and expensive. I lost all my CAD files, symbols, everything.

as a result, i will NEVER use McAfee again, when i get a new computer, that's the first thing I uninstall. And i wnet out and purchasd a Burner, i think it was $300 at the time.

Symantec for life.