McAfee dominates my CPU.

[ewmon]

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.

[insane_alien]

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.

[StringJunky]

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/

[ewmon]

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?

[insane_alien]

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.

[khaled]

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

[Mr Skeptic]

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