Why does McAfee take nearly 100 meg. Ram?

[jsteph]

Hi all,
I've just been a bit perturbed by how huge a memory footprint McaFee has (I'm using Viruscan Enterprise 8.0).

When I sort Task Mgr processes by Memory Used, MCShield.exe is consistently the biggest hog--coming in at 80-100 meg.

Is this a leak that McAfee can't fix, or is it the nature of the beast? Years ago we had Norton and as I recall it didn't come in anywhere near that ridiculous a footprint.

Thanks,
--Jim

 

[xit]

McAfee along with Norton are system hogs, they are fine programs but that is the trade off, as infections become more complicated so has the anti-virus programs. There are of course less bloated ones out there like AVG and others that consume fewer resources.

xit

 

[goombawaho]

Viruscan Enterprise 8.0 is nothing compared to the consumer products like Mcafee Security Center. Those will slow your computer down unmercifully in my experience.

Comcast gives it away "free" if you have their service, but I got it off my PC after a short test drive.

The other product that I've seen really slowing down PCs is Norton 360.

Windows Live OneCare is a nice balance between protection and performance hit.

 

[kjv1611]

If you want a corporate solution, the Symantec Corporate Antivirus seems to use MUCH less in the way of system resources than the Home-version of Norton antivirus.

To give you a for instance. Where I work, they've used Symantec since day one, I believe, or at least as long as I can remember. Yeah, it can be a resource hog at times, but nothing as bad as that instance of McAfee you mention.

I'm running an older Dell Optiplex gx620 with a Pentium 4D CPU @ 3Ghz, 1GB DDR-2 RAM (I think it's DDR-2), standard 7200 RPM hard drive, low end dedicated graphics (Radeon X600).

This morning, the most that Rtvscan is consuming (biggest part of Symantec) is 57MB - and that's about typical. If it was the Norton home version, it'd probably be much higher. And actually, I've seen AVG run as high, myself, on several systems, with their latest version - but it's AV and Antispyware as well.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kjv1611]

Oh, sorry, also running Windows XP Pro - is at least SP2, I believe, not sure if SP3 or not.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[goombawaho]

Norton Corporate Edition is a totally different product and YES, my experience with that is much better than with the consumer version.

The OP didn't really say whether he is using it on a home or work computer. Some people get their AV from work to use on a home PC and others just bootleg it.

The point being, we don't know if he really has any options to change. If it's corporate, IT will dictate to use one product, so we need to know more about the user's situation.

 

[jsteph]

I use McAfee Enterprise at home, with permission from my employer, since I work at some some days, and of course at work.

On my work computer, MCShield shows similar high RAM usage--100 megs there. We use Symantec Corporate AV for our servers, but so far the decision (of which I'm not a part of) is to stick with McAfee for desktops.

It appears that all desktops that I've seen at work show MCShield taking up the same high ram usage, from 80-100 meg. I just don't understand what could require such a huge footprint. I know it has to have some of the virus signatures in memory to quickly scan files, but not 100 meg. All the .mcs and dat files--even all the files in all the Network Associates directories--both in Program Files and in Docs & Settings\allusers\appdat--added together are only 40 meg.

While I admit to having limited knowledge of what exactly MCShield does at a low level, I do know what memory leaks are. And between the two, my guess is at least some of this is memory leak.
--Jim

 

[goombawaho]

If you have Mcafee Viruscan Enterprise version 8.0, make sure you are up to Patch 16 for that product. That's the latest patch.

Also make sure th scan engine is 5300

 

[jsteph]

goom,
I'm at scan engine 5300, virus defs 5407, but the Patch is only 11. I did an Update Now, and all it said the latest hotfix was patch 11. Is there a direct link to update to patch 16?
Thanks,
--Jim

 

[goombawaho]

You have to have a grant number to put in to reach your Mcafee products and then you can reach the downloads section which includes the patches. The grant number would (should) be known by your IT department. They can login and get it for you if they're willing. They really should get some demerit points for NOT having already gotten the workstations up to the latest patch level.

https://secure.nai.com/apps/downloads/my_products/login.asp?region=us&segment=small

Above is the portal to the "my products" area, but I can't give you a grant number. You won't find the patch floating on the internet either unless you used a Torrent site or something like that and that can be dangerous.

So, in answer to your question - no, there is no direct link without logging in to obtain the patch.