Others say...

"Keep this thing away from your PC. "
I just got the automatic upgrade. THE PROGRAM DOES NOT HAVE A CLOSE FEATURE!!! That's right, once it's running on your computer, you cannot close it. I went to the manufacturer's tech support forum. Apparently, the people at McAffe haven't decided upon whether or not to include such a feature. I feel like I just downloaded a piece of malicious software! Read on for more complaints...

"This product is AWFUL. "
I have had earlier versions of this product which worked OK (except the SPAM blocker was over zealous). I bought the upgrade on CD and after TWO months I get an expiration message. This is where it gets to be a nightmare. I have spent HOURS with McAfee support who have had me download programs aimed to clean out remnants of older versions and deleting lines from the registry. Literally hours and hours later, dozens of re-boots, working in Windows SAFE mode it still won't work. This product is a waste of money and a waste of time. I am looking into a class action suit. Any one want to join?

"Stupid"
Twenty years using computers, and this is the first virus scanner that doesn't allow me to tell it what drives it should scan. It's very obvious (to anyone with half a brain) that we might not want to scan all of them. In my case, the program "hangs" while scanning my .Mac iDrive. I don't need that drive scanned, but there's no way to tell the product a simple thing like that.

Other than that, frankly, I've had zero problems.

"No Customer Support for Faulty Product"
Is there an option for 0 stars?

I've been running McAfee on my 3 home computers for the past several years. When I purchased/renewed/upgraded to the latest version of Security Center, my system began to lock-up almost constantly. A busy time of year for me, it took several weeks to determine that McAfee was clearly the problem (I uninstalled it and my lock-up problems ceased. I reinstalled it and they returned.)

I spent several sessions with their free "Chat" support - it's a good things those guys are literate, because everything they know they read from the knowledge base available over the internet. I'd already read that, so 3+ hours were wasted on that adventure.

I decided to try and get a refund. McAfee has a 30 day refund policy. This seems reasonable until you realize that they start nagging you to renew your produce licence 60 days prior to the expiration date. After ignoring their pop-up box reminders for almost a month, I renewed just to get them off my back. Interestingly, the new software wouldn't load until the expiration date of the old software, at which point my 30 days for return was already past (it's from purchase date, not install date).

I did manage to convince their customer service to provide me with free phone support (they usually charge for that). After waiting 2 hours! on hold, I finally talked to a gentleman who listened to the history of my problem and said he'd be able to resolve it. This was a known problem (system lockup when opening Outlook or Internet Explorer). First I had to reinstall the software. He directed me to download the software that supposedly included the patch. When I refused to end the phone call while the software loaded - in case there were additional problems - he promised to call me back. Surprise! He never did.

After the software loaded, the same problems persisted. So, I sat on hold another two hours. The new tech support guy knew exactly where to go. Seems it's still an ongoing problem and the existing patch didn't fix my problem. We turned off the McAfee Proxy Server and away we went. We sent and received e-mail and surfed. Everything appeared fine...until the next morning when I started my computer up again.

Two days of periodic lockups (although not as bad as before) and today I sat 1.5 hours on the phone, with instructions to turn off the McAfee e-mail proxy and the McAfee redirector service. Oh, and here's the kicker. Each time I call for my free support, it's only good for another 3 days. Today is Friday. My support ends on Monday. They don't work weekends. In order to extend my support, I'll need to sit on hold for hours Monday just to ping my case number and extend it for another 3 days.

Why is it the phone company and the cable company can automatically take your information and call you back when they have a customer service representative available, preventing ticked off customers who waited on hold extended periods of time. Surely a "technical" company could employ this technology!

Why is it that they find all kinds of ways to sneak into my PC and nag me when my subscription is about to expire, take my money, then refuse all technical service for a faulty product they released. One would think they'd fall all over themselves trying to protect "their good name" after a bad release.

Well, they won't get any more of my money. My advice, find different software to protect your system. This company does not stand behind their product.

"Lots of Problems!!"
I had been using McAfee on 4 PCs in my household for about a year, as I get a FREE download of Virus Scan, Firewall, and Security Center from my ISP. I always liked their Virus Scan. Firewall was OK.

Then I made the mistake of allowing the automated update download to the next version of Security Center. Program came with a bunch of extra utilities that don't have a lot to do with VirusScan or Firewall. Ran Disk Space recover once. I noted that the default of the program is to delete ALL of your previous System Restore points! Fortunately, I disabled that selection, because when I ran the disk cleanup utility, McAfee deleted the program that lets Microsoft know I have a legal version of Windows! I immediately got pop-ups from MS, indicating that I have pirate software, and need to buy Windows. I restored to an earlier point and fixed the issue.

A few weeks later, the virus definitions would not download anymore. In trying to download & install the program again to fix the problem, the McAfee install script incompletely uninstalled the old software, and then would hang when trying to reinstall. 6 hours of Chat Support from McAfee later, I have been able to clean out most of the old software, but unable to reinstall McAfee.

As an added "Bonus", the utility IEREGFIX.BAT that they supply on their support site as part to their troubleshooting and maintenance had disabled Windows Media Player for all user accounts except the administrator account. Took another 3 hours to go back to System Restore about 3 weeks ago, and re-do all of the updates to my PC that I had made in the last 3 weeks.

I have now installed ZoneAlarm. Much faster to load at boot, works well, and most importantly, it hasn't trashed my system!