Mcafee antivirus & missing favourites

[Darren]

My sister is having problems with her netbook. She powered it up to find her bookmarks have vanished without trace. Obviously, she could re save them, but doesn't know how it happened.
Secondly, her Mcafee trial software (not sure if it came with the netbook or the T-Mobile Dongle) has expired and it is asking her to renew- in dollars. Surely it should direct her to the UK site or at least let her pay in sterling, shouldn't it?

[Lissa]

Personally I've never liked MacAfee - not since the configuration of the anti-virus prompted me to download a test virus from MacAfee's server so I could see what happens when it finds something. It promptly detected the virus and then told me IT COULDN'T REMOVE IT~! That's poor in anyone's book. She should try one of the free suites available - I'm very impressed with Comodo's products at the moment. I've not tried the security one but if it's as good as their backup tool I'd be tempted to use it when my Kaspersky licence expires.

The missing favourites might be down to a user account problem. What version of Windows does she have?

[Si Hunt]

The first thing I did when I got the new computer was to uninstall the trial McAfee and download AVG Anti-Virus instead - it's no trouble, I get no viruses and best of all it's completely free.

Si.

[Darren]

Cheers guys.

AVG may be a good idea. Does Mcafee uninstall easily?

The missing favourites might be down to a user account problem. What version of Windows does she have?

She's on XP Home.

[Si Hunt]

Mine uninstalled easily enough. If not, leave it there and just remove it from the startup programs list.

Si.

[duncan]

I won't touch McAfee. The one and only time I did buy it my PC kept freezing. Only when I uninstalled it did things work smoothly again.

[Rob McCow]

I had McAfee about 9 or 10 years ago. The most significant effect it had on my PC was extending the level loading time of Half Life from 10 seconds to 40 seconds.

But it is good to have some form of anti-virus software. AVG is free, but if you want to spend money you could try Norton.

[Lissa]

I know people who swear by McAfee and people who swear at it. I've used Kaspersky for years and it's generally been fine.

My tip for the XP netbook would be to install security software, set up a second user account without admin privilages and use that for every day use. Nasties have less scope for doing harm if they don't have an admin account to play with.