Can you help stop McAfee shutting down Windows Media Center?

Question

I have the free AT&T McAfee Internet Security that comes with having AT&T U-Verse service. I have for several years without any incident like the one I am currently having:

Whenever I access my PC via the XBox 360 using Windows Media Center to view videos I have stored on my PC, after about 3 minutes, it will stop mid-viewing and display an error message that basically says "A program on your PC has stopped Windows Media Extender from working". I used the Event Viewer program to confirm that it IS McAfee that is causing this, now I just need to know how to stop it.

I have gone into the firewall settings of the McAfee program and confirmed that Windows Media Center has full permissions, same as all my other trusted programs. I even turned off NetGuard and the problem still persisted.

The worst part is that after it happens, I have difficulty connecting to the PC again after it occurs - it keeps telling me there is a connection error and I should restart my XBox. The problem isn't with the XBox, or the PC - it's McAfee.

The only thing that changed when this started happening is that McAfee had an update to their software. My problems began after downloading & installing the update and restarting my PC.

Answer 1

I have AT & T and I don't use that McCrappy antivirus at all....nothing but problems...your solution to the problem is simple...uninstall and delete McAfee from the computer and download another AV for free...I use Avast free and no problems.



http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download



Or >> Just place Windows Media Center in the exclusions tab of McAfee and it will go away.

Answer 2

2

Answer 3

Personally, I dislike mcAfee's ability to take over the computer. I fix my neighbor's computer without charge. Many of them have problems similar to yours.



It is somewhat impossible for me to remove mcAfee from a Vista OS.

I can get it from stop functioning but it literally takes me over an hour and I am fairly good at removing things. Having said all that.

1. I found that I used a freeware from portableapps.com/apps called CLAMWIN.

it is slow but cleans viruses. If you use this you need to go to a top tab in preferences and select to remove the viruses. I did this just 2 days ago and it found 4 trojans and numerous problems with something that included the name mcAfee. I think it was some sort of malware that has a name similar to mcAfee but is not part of the program itself. I do not know how to technically write what I just said. The program CLAMWIN ran for several hours.It runs from a flashdrive .

I then tried to remove mcAfee from the computer and could not so I went into the registry [not for the weak of heart] and found over 100 references to mcAfee and removed them. I am not sure I even got them all. I then deleted the contents of the mcAfee program as I could not remove it in Control panel.

I was working on a friend's computer but had it been mine I would had formatted my hard drive and reinstalled my system.

The problem is if you did not want mcAfee at all and it seems to come associated with a large number of software downloads. I try to be quite careful on each screen that appears on the installation program. A favorite device is the opening screen says quick install or custom install.

I select the custom and uncheck the selections. Often one of them is mcAfee.

One more thing. You might try VLC instead of the windows viewer. VLC is available on opensource.net and is a very excellent viewer and player. opensource is a marvel of virus free freeware . I cannot praise it enough.

Answer 4

I have McAfee as well and yesterday it did an update and since then I have had the exact same problem your are mentioning.

I have tried many different methods but to no avail.

Finally I just transfered it to a computer without McAfee and all is working again, except .MKV files but that could be because of computer not having a player for them or codec.

Answer 5

I already tried to stop this program but i am not able to successful shutdown... i am facing same situation..