so here i am on my new computer with my undownloaded mcafee subscription and i get this e mail apologizing for crashing my computer with the last download. which fortunately i didn't make.

now i am nervous about downloading it.

suggestions?

My question, to Mcafee, would be about how it attained your address to apologize for a flawed download since you hadn't activated your subscription? It seems it was a "blind" mass/spam mailing taking a "guess" and seeking to entice people to its site/program.

I wouldn't be nervous; I betcha if someone checked the full pathway of the mail header, it might likely display that the mssg. you received didn't even originate from Mcafee. It strikes me as a guised method of "advertising."

About the best AV? I don't know if it's the best, yet I use Symantec Norton and couple that with running Bit Defender tools independently or as released. I prefer Norton over some others since I don't like the intrusiveness of some apps. - stopping everything instead of running seemingly seamlessly and silently in the background.

There isn't a single AV app. that is totally fail-proof. Each has an inherent failure rate - or misses (and its due to a lull between when newer virus codes are launched and when detection and definitions are updated). The miss rate is low, but... it's still a prob.

To greatly reduce the risks? Honestly? Mac 'puters . PCs are more prone to attack/invasion/viruses because they are the object of malicious code-writers' affection/obsession.

Hello Annie,

I have used AVG with good results. You can load it for free at

http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Vir...ml?tag=lst-0-2

It is pretty slick, and doesn't "hog" your system resources like others I have tried, such as Norton and McAfee, Norton was the worst as far as resource hogging in my opinion. And if you have to try to get rid of Norton and re-install it, good luck! Its a major PITA...
I do use McAfee now since i get the whole package as a free benefit from
Comcast, and it seems to work just fine, no problems yet.
AVG has daily updates that load automatically, sometimes more than once a day, telling me they must be keeping up on things.

Peace
Rags

I use AVG but it keeps telling me that my internal virus scanner is out of date, and when I try to upload new version it says there are non available. Any guesses as to what I am doing wrong.

I suggest at least 2 - I used AVG {free version} and ended up with 4 viruses- auto updates and all.
Bit Defender - {demo} download was the one that finally found the problems.

any of the brand name AV should be good- Pcillin, bit defender,mcafee, norton, kaspersky - you can usually go to the websites and dnload a demo- to try and see if you like how it is for you.

Spybot has been a good spyware program for me. I just do a manual scan once a week or so with it- it's not running all the time.

I'm using mcafee suite now and it does use a lot of resources so I uninstalled it and then reinstalled it - only loading the parts of it I really needed.
much better now.

netscape 8.1 {free browser} has some built in security features- you can turn them on/off and it will run a scan when it installs too.
it found a trojan.

marijo-
AVG - I had the same thing happen I uninstalled and reinstalled it too- i think a file got lost or something- but eventually it missed the viruses that ended up crashing my hardrive - or when i deleted some of the "bad "files I might got rid of something important - cause it crashed a week later.

Using Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer helps, too. Add Mozilla Thunderbird in place of Outlook Express to complete the package.