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Troubleshooting McAfee SaaS Endpoint Protection (McAfee Total Protection)

Previewing PDF or Adding PDF to Email Message Is Slow

In Outlook, when adding a PDF to a message, or previewing a PDF in an existing message, Outlook pauses for about 30 seconds and then continues normally. This has been observed with Outlook 2010 and McAfee SaaS agent version 5.4.0 Patch 1. Upgrade the agent to the latest by reinstalling with the URL or standalone agent, or wait for the program update to deploy by itself.

Cannot Load Outlook Add-In

When launching Microsoft Outlook, the following error is displayed:

    “The Add-In 'Exchange Scan' cannot be loaded & has been disabled by Outlook. Please contact Add-In manufacturer for an update. If no update is available please uninstall the Add-In.”

This occurs due to an obsolete reference in Outlook's configuration data. To resolve:

In Windows Vista:

  1. Close Microsoft Outlook.

  2. Click the Start button and enter %LOCALAPPDATA% in the search box.

    A folder window will appear.

  3. Double-click the Microsoft folder.

  4. Double-click the Outlook folder.

  5. Delete EXTEND.DAT (or it may appear simply as EXTEND).

  6. Close the window.

  7. Open Outlook.

Unable to Update

There are a number of issues that may cause McAfee Total Protection not to update:

  • Check that the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) service is running under the Local System account.

  • If McAfee Total Protection does not update in the background, and if you receive an error message using the Update Now option in the taskbar, some files in your internet cache may be damaged or invalid. Clear the Internet Explorer cache, browsing history and cookies. (Note, this may occur even if you use Firefox or another non-Microsoft web browser. Clear the caches in your main browser and in Internet Explorer.)

    Also, Internet Explorer must be set to Automatically check for newer versions of pages otherwise the update process will not be able to determine there is a new signature available. Under Tools, Internet Options, choose Settings and set Check for newer versions of stored pages: Automatically.

  • If your browser settings are too restrictive, the update may fail or you may receive the error “Your current security settings prohibit running ActiveX controls on this page” at startup and at regular intervals. To resolve this: open Internet Explorer, choose Internet Options from the Tools menu, click the Security tab, click Trusted Sites, click Sites, type *.mcafeeasap.com and click Add. Then click OK, and OK.

  • McAfee Total Protection cannot update if the system drive (usually C:) has only a few megabytes of free space. (See Freeing Disk Space.)

  • When you initiate a manual update using Update Now, you may receive the following message:

      “Unable to update. One or more Total Protection windows are still open. Please close all the windows and select Update Now from the menu to try again.”

    This occurs because McAfee Total Protection is currently conducting a background scan. Let the scan finish or reboot to stop the scan.

  • Windows 95 systems stopped receiving updates (DATs) at 31 December 2006, Windows 98/ME systems stopped on 30 June 2007, Windows NT 4.0 stopped on 31 December 2007 and Windows 2000 stopped on 31 December 2010. McAfee Total Protection will still function on those operating systems, but will not update their signature databases.

Old Update Date

Under the About Total Protection for Small Business dialog, the Last Updated date may be several months old. This is the last update to the program and engine. These updates are issued approximately once a year. The date by Last Checked is when the system last looked for a virus definitions update (but not necessarily when it actually updated the definitions). The definitions database date is shown by Created On. This date will always be yesterday or a few days old because it is a U.S. date stamp and updates are issued on Monday to Friday, U.S. time.

ActiveX Issues

When installing McAfee Total Protection using the browser-based (URL) method, an ActiveX control is installed, which then downloads and installs the main program. However, during the attempt to launch the ActiveX control, Internet Explorer says:

  • An ActiveX control on this page is not safe.

This can occur if certain library files are old, not registered properly, or if mismatched versions are installed. (This should generally not happen on Windows 2000 and above because later versions of Windows are more resilient against problems with library files.)

One remedy is to run Internet Explorer's Repair functionality (IE 5.0, XP), reinstall Internet Explorer or upgrade Internet Explorer to the latest version.

See also:

Cannot Shutdown/Reboot

McAfee Total Protection will not allow the system to shutdown or reboot if a diskette is in the floppy drive, and will beep continuously. On systems without speakers, this will appear as if the shutdown/reboot process has frozen. Remove the floppy disk.

Firewall Issues

McAfee Total Protection requires outbound access on port 443 to perform system status uploads. If port 443 is not available, non-secure status uploads are performed over port 80.

Performance Issues

On Windows 98 and Windows Me you may experience erratic mouse behaviour and very slow response to opening documents, programs and so on. A patch is available for this issue. Please contact us.

Buffer Overflows

Overflowing memory buffers is a way for malicious code to circumvent the normal function of an application or operating system. McAfee Total Protection has the ability to detect this sort of operation and prevent it from succeeding — although the best way to protect against buffer overflows is to install the software updates which remedy them. However, sometimes legitimate programs trigger buffer overflows which would not normally cause a problem, but McAfee Total Protection will cause the program to fail. Some known applications that exhibit this behaviour are:

McAfee Icon Disappears and Reappears

This is by design and occurs during signature updates. McAfee Total Protection updates itself without requiring a reboot, so when updates are downloaded, McAfee Total Protection is closed, the updates are applied, and it starts again. Usually this only takes a few seconds, but on slower machines, or if you have not had an update for a while (more than a few weeks), the McAfee icon may be missing for something like 60 seconds. In this situation, be patient: McAfee will reappear when the updates are finished.

Terminal Services Issues

  • McAfee Total Protection is supported in a Terminal Services environment, although it may not update if a logged-in user does not have internet access.

  • When multiple users are logged in, the McAfee icon will disappear from all sessions when an update is loaded, but will only re-appear in the session which initiated the update. All the other sessions are still protected, however.

Removing Existing Antivirus Systems

  • See here for a list of anti-virus removers.

Stop 0x000000be Error

A system that has had McAfee uninstalled may generate STOP 0x000000be (ATTEMPTED_WRITE_TO_READONLY_MEMORY) errors. This occurs because the various associated McAfee driver files remain on the system. Use Sysinternals' Autoruns tool to disable (not delete) the various McAfee entries under the Drivers tab.
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