Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Troubleshoot your McAfee Security Centre

Caution: This is gona be a technical post. I thought of writing this cos I wasted close to 5 hours fixing this issue and I din find any docs online to help me with the steps.

Today my desktop greeted me with a warning msg. My McAfee icon was blinking red. It says "the detection signature is old" and when i try to fix it, it says " Update error. please re-install McAfee Virus Scan Plus". I took close to five hours to fix the issue. So this post helps people out there who has a McAfee account to fix their problem in minutes.
this post assumes that the date and time of your computer is correct

Nature of the problem:

Error Msg: the detection signature is old.

You try to "fix" the issue, but the button "fix" refuses to obey you.

You forcefully download updates, but you are greeted with more error msgs.


Remedy:

1.] Try fixing the issue with McAfee Virtual Technician. You could download it here.

if it does not work:

1.] Right click on the M icon near your system clock and select updates. 

If it throws another error msg as follows:

1.] Make sure you have registered yourself with McAfee online. This happens during first installation.

2.] Restart your computer. Ths makes sure no program sessions are running in the background.

3.] Go to "Add/Remove Programs" in your Control Panel and remove McAfee.

4.] Restart your computer.

5.] Download MCPR.exe from here. MCPR is McAfee Consumer Product Removal tool.

6.] Run MCPR and restart your computer.

7.] Login to your McAfee account and download DMSetup.

8.] Run DMSetup and update your detection files.

if the download pages throws you an error msg "page cannot be displayed" or "unresolved dns" or "broken link", it means that you need to edit your driver file.

1.] open command prompt [start->run->cmd]
2.] type in "drivers". hit enter
3.] open the folder named "etc"
4.] open the file named "hosts" using notepad.
5.] it would have lot of commented lines and "127.0.0.1       localhost" towards the end of the file.
6.] Below "127.0.0.1       localhost" add the following =>
128.241.218.66  download.mcafee.com
128.241.218.75  download.mcafee.com
7.] save and close the file.
8.] flush your dns addresses and renew your ip.
9.] you are good to go!

hope these would help all those who uses McAfee Security Centre.

20 comments:

Arunima said...

Well thanks for sharing this info.
I 2 use McAfee...i've bookmarked this post n if i vil face any probs of this kind, i know vere lies d ans.

Priya Joyce said...

well,no probs as such,may be coz no McAfee also..lol

Anil Sawan said...

@arunima: lets hope you would never have to use this book mark.. its irritating when the machine dsnt listen to the man [or woman] :-)

Anil Sawan said...

@priya: very funny :-) anyways McAfee[original version] is nice. take my word for that.

Sen said...

I know who to call if my computer ever gives me trouble...Technology scares me :))

Anil Sawan said...

@Sen, if u aint married : i wish ur hubby to be an IT architect :-)

Keshi said...

McAfee never gave me any trouble :)

Keshi.

Sen said...

@ sawan...no I aint married...and have no plans of ruining some poor chaps life any time soon :))

Niranjani Ravi said...

Hey thanks for that very interesting comment for my '2009' article :D

Anil Sawan said...

@Keshi: Good going girlie.. hope it never gives u a trouble :-)

Anil Sawan said...

@sen: u never know.. what if some one have already prepared himself for the suicide :-)

Anil Sawan said...

@niroo : its a pleasure to read you :-)

Scattered Thoughts... said...

uhhh.. emotions of ruffled soul and Mcfee.. what's up dude.. you need love in your life for sure and not from a computer generated chick ;)

Anil Sawan said...

@scattered thoughts. how do you feel when you login to your system and you find all warnings on screen? for me its another emotion - something with a higher degree than frustration :-)

vinny said...

hahhahhahhaaa...ur post n the comments..everything's funny:)
"lohe ko lohe se kato", so mcafee antivirus is infact the bigger virus to eat smaller virus..
dont update..keep cool..when everythng gets crashed, format, re-install and go !

btw, my laptop seems fine right now, but may go off..in my case its norton:) also i'm out of town for a week..will join asap

Anil Sawan said...

@vins: a word of advise: Norton sucks big time! u cant even uninstall it! when you think of formating your pc, make sure you dnt show mercy on norton!

i cant think of formatting my pc. loadz of software installed, formating would be pain. installing them again, downloading patches and updates, registering them.. its big time pain.. wut are you upto? vacation?? would mis ya for sure..

Vin said...

how's kasper ??
yeah, i'm on a vacation, if one can call that..all started with that dream of a black cobra:)

maybe i should post it someday:):)

Anil Sawan said...

@vins: dnt know bout kasper.. but if u r looking for a free antivirus, avg would be nice..

wuts cobra to do ith vacation? i dnt see u online!

WarmSunshine said...

I use McAfee and it's going great! I'll save this info somewhere and it'll help out someday

really helpful post! :)

Anil Sawan said...

@Meher: Glad that you found it helpful.