I have McAfee whose scans (mcods.exe) dominate my CPU (98+%) and essentially lock me out for minutes at a time, so what can I do to tame this beast (Norton won’t load on my machine)? Thanks.

there should be an option to set the scans as a background process.

 

i don't have mcafee(or any virus scanner for that matter) so i'm not sure where this option would be located.

If it's that heavy on your system resources, I'd dump it and use Microsoft Security Essentials...it's fast, light as a feather on your system resources and free. The first full system scan takes a long time but after that it's much quicker, especially if you use the Quick Scan on a regular basis...it has realtime protection too.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

 

Mix that with Spywareblaster, which doesn't use any resources, and the Windows Firewall...you're sorted!

 

http://www.filehippo.com/download_spywareblaster/

there should be an option to set the scans as a background process.

 

i don't have mcafee(or any virus scanner for that matter) so i'm not sure where this option would be located.

 

Thank you alien, yes, there is a tiny gray "Run scan in background" button in the lower right corner of the popup that appears after the scan starts. This should do it.

 

PS -- You have no virus scanner?

there should be an option to make that permanent somewhere(unless the programmers followed a chocolate teapot strategy)

 

and no, i have no virus scanner. the only time i run windows its not connected to the net anyway.

 

linux has no known viruses in the wild anyway and they typically aren't viable for long anyway.

i use Avira Free Anti-virus, and if would pay money, i'd choose Kasper-sky ...

I use AVG, and I tell it to do its scans at a time when I'm not using the computer.