McAfee runs full scan at start up

Mcafee Enterprise 7.1

when the user logs on it runs a background full system scan or somtheing (13000 + files)

need less to say it realy bogs the system down for the first 20 min.

may also be casueing the following side effects, explorer.exe fails to load, intermittent, all the user gets is the background, starting the explorer task works around this.


Scan all fixed disks task is not scheduled, nor is hte ondemand scanner comming up to show progress. However the on access scanner is going nuts, 13000 + files in 5 min... ?

I would look at ePolicy Orchestrator (if you are using it to manage the McAfee engines) or group policy/login script to see if anythinf is launching this.

You can change several things about that scan. You can schedule it for a time when the user is less busy, in other words, NOT at startup. You can also throttle back the CPU on scans so it's not running at 100%.

-not using ePolicy
-On demand scans are not scheduled (on demand only)
-the onlly thing in Virus scan that has been told to load at startup is on access scanner

have throtled back the on demand scanner to 10%, will see if that changes anything tommorow.

I take it no scripts or policies are bringing this up either then?

Take a look at the registry key to see if any specific switches are used with the process in question.

That should be under the HKLM/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/WINDOWS/CURRENTVERSION/RUN/...



Also, it it is "on access", could it be that something else is pullling these files out to be accessed in the first place? Another AV running?

throttling back the on demand scanner improved things but it still takes more than 5 min to boot up. on the plus side it no longer forgets to load explorer.exe

I thought you wanted to completely stop the scan from occuring, that's why I suggested finding the registry Run entry for McAfee and removing it.


I forgot to mention that MSCONFIG.EXE may have been a more user-friendly tool to use to get the same result.

removing the registry run entrys prevent McAfee from loading at start up. sure it fixes the problem, but introduces others given this is a mobile computer.


McAfee reg keys (in Run):
"C:\Program Files\Network Associates\VirusScan\SHSTAT.EXE" /STANDALONE
"C:\Program Files\Network Associates\Common Framework\UpdaterUI.exe" /StartedFromRunKey

Check out this link.

Enterprise 7.1 General Policies

I think it will help you solve that problem.

im not using ePolicy. but i checked the settings for the sysems in question and they are set the same as the ePolicy screen shot.

This is a hard nut to crack. Pretty much the norm when problem come up with McAfee.

Next idea then:

ProtectionPilot / WinXP SP2 combo?