McAfee = Eats CPU ...

Ok, I can clearly see that my McAfee programs eat my CPU often putting it up to 80-100% usage.

Can anyone give me some tips? Is it just the antivirus which is taking the CPU time or the firewall too? Should I just disable the antivirus and leave the firewall running? If so... what can I get to replace the antivirus which doesn't use up so much CPU?

 

What else is running in the background?

What operating system is it and what are your system specs etc?

More information is required.

 

while McAfee can be bloated and overbearing, its not usually a hog THAT much (80-100%).

i suggest you make certain your computer is free of spyware and adware (check the spyware section of the forum for steps to take), and if you are clean and STILL don't like McAfee, try Avast! Antivirus. its free and great.

 

I notice I wrote 'often', that wasn't meant to be that, I must have been typing without thinking. Something like 'sometimes' would have been better.

Well sometimes it doesn't seem to even do anything but some times it rockets and suddenly my computer slows down and up. 2 ghz P4, 813mb ram, XP.

It's not the other things in the background though, I have already reduced all that stuff throught blackviper's site and other stuff too etc and I'm almost all sorted out with spyware.

At the moment, while I'm not running any other programs or anything apart from this, McAfee doesn't use much CPU, often 0%. But as soon as I start running programs it starts shooting up, not always as high as 80-100 but sometimes...
On average, when opening programs it goes up to around 25-40%, sometimes higher sometimes lower. Usualy, I open programs... McAfee tries to run at the same time... and it slows the loading time too. But once programs are open it doesn't do as much. It varies alot tho.
Example... I open Steam (program for Valve games, including HL2) as well as SpybotS&D and it goes up to 50% for a short time, then down to 30% andit flickers a bit as Steam loads and then when it is finished it stays at 0-5%.

Is that realy a problem or is that fairly normal?

 

thats fairly normal-- for a CPU hogging Antivirus like McAfee and Norton.

i suggest you uninstall McAfee and give Avast a try. its free, not a big resource hog, and has a nice interface. www.avast.com