Mcafee 8 and its tendency to dial out

One annoying problem recently was installing McAfee 8 on my mother's
computer, and finding it kept popping up a dial-out box, while she was in
the middle of a game. Although you'd think it was possible to stop this by
changing settings, trust me, it isn't - and if you mess with the task
scheduler, you find the event pops back like a bad penny.

Looking at the messageboards this seems to be a common problem, so here's
how I fixed it in the end.

First is the renaming of program files\mcafee.com\agent\mcupdate.exe to
something else (like xmcupdate.exe) - I am saying this from memory - if you
can't find it there, look in program files\mcafee.com\shared.

Secondly, rename program files\mcafee.com\shared\mcinfo.exe to something
like xmcinfo.exe. (again, apologies if you don't find it there - check the
\agent folder)

It's important to rename these in case you have to undo any of this.

Thirdly remove the Mcafee task if it's in the task scheduler.

Now - here's the tricky part, because Mcafee 8 NEEDS a program called
mcupdate in the place where you renamed it, or it won't play ball - and you
will have no virus protection (which isn't the intention of course). If so,
it gives a warning when it boots up, and stops in its tracks and there will
be no red M in the corner.

You need to find (or write if you are a programmer!) a dummy program that
does nothing useful, or use a little dos program with its option set to run
minimised & "close on exit" so it doesn't leave a dirty Dos window open,
such as MEM.EXE from windows/command (mem just displays DOS memory)

I hope I am remembering that correctly - you could do the same with MCINFO
so there are mcinfo and mcupdate programs there that do nothing.

You should find (we did) that the task is no longer reinstated, and no dial
out box comes up, and yet you can still manually update and the virus
checker is still in force.

All information here is mentioned with best intentions, but any action you
take is at your own risk.

Geoff.