VirusScan Professional 7.0

To work effectively, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 Professional operates on many levels. The new Hostile Activity Watch Kernel (HAWK) constantly monitors your PC for viruslike activity and integrates well with many e-mail clients. VShield runs constantly in the background, checking files as you open them. Even if you choose to disable VShield, the program still protects Microsoft Office files by checking them before you open them. It also protects against dangerous e-mail scripts by looking for suspicious behavior. Any suspect activity is stopped immediately.

For users using Windows 98, 98 SE, or Me, there is the Safe & Sound function that takes copies of your documents and keeps them safe in the event they are corrupted or damaged. Note that this does not work with Windows 2000 and XP.

Some of the latest viruses can stop antivirus programs from working properly once they have infected a machine. If you suspect this is the case, you can boot your PC directly from the McAfee VirusScan 7.0 Professional installation CD-ROM, ensuring a clean environment for it to run in. You can also create a boot floppy to do the same thing.

Like the other products in McAfee's security range, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 Professional uses Instant Updater to constantly check for and automatically download product updates when you are online.

Of course, any antivirus product is only as good as its ability to stop viruses from infecting your system. Happily, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 Professional has been given a 100% rating by Virus Bulletin (although this assumes you keep your product up-to-date with Instant Updater).

The Professional edition of VirusScan 7.0 has several features not included in the standard one. The secure erase feature allows you to remove files from your PC in a far more secure way than by simply deleting them, thus protecting your sensitive data. You can also tidy up your temporary files and browser files automatically. This saves disk space and can make your PC run a little faster, too. A final privacy feature is the ability to remove MRU data. This controls the most recently used files list you see at the bottom of many programs File menus.

McAfee VirusScan 7.0 Professional Edition is a worthy update, and existing users will appreciate the improved security this release offers, as well as its additional features. --Iain Laskey, Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com Product Description
Stop viruses and keep your PC safe with McAfee VirusScan Professional 7.0. When you're surfing the Internet there's more to worry about than just viruses. VirusScan includes extra firewall protection to keep your computer safe from worms, Trojan horses, as well as viruses, when you're online. It destroys threats at all entry points to your PC, including e-mail and synchronization with your PDA. It constantly monitors and stops virus-like activity on your computer to prevent any new threats from spreading.

VirusScan Professional Edition also includes quick cleanup of your PC, complete shredding for privacy, and more.

The AV/FW set is packed with features - you can even catch a hacker, who tries to break to your machine! Scanner (or set of scanners) is one of the most reliable on the market. If you use dial-up or have slow connection, you can still download newest virus definitions (Norton AV is unable to do that). FW is easy to set and has auto security-check.

I had none problem to install, configure and manage it.

They are only lack of ad-blocking feature in the package to be absolutely perfect.

McAfee Pro 7 it's one of the must-have for me and I think that now it is the best security solution on the market.


Not For Morons....   May 3, 2003
H. A Huffman (Mt. Prospect, IL USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful

This product works well. The critics who gave this product such negative reviews amaze me. I've never heard of people having problems with VirusScan to such a degree as these "experts". I have never had a problem with this software since version 3. I am an avid gamer, having built and configured hundreds of PCs. It works better than the Norton stuff, which has had some serious program conflict issues in the past.

I have configured VirusScan to work in many different situations with no problems. I've never had a problem with the updating programs, in fact its running right now to update my virus DAT file. I've also run it to update my entire program over the web last week, nothing bad happened. I do know that if you install this software in an unstable environment (where the hard disk is bad in spots, where the OS has crashing problems) then it only makes the situation worse.

The firewall works very well and it will crash Internet Explorer or Netscape if you don't configure it to recognize these programs. I think this is where the "experts" run into trouble. If you have a cable modem then VirusScan works even better.

I took away one star due to the QuickClean Program. Although it does do a decent job cleaning out junk files from a PC, I don't like some of the features of this program, it needs re-tooling in my opinion.

Just pay attention when you install and configure this program and you will have no problems.


Just purchased this software for added firewall protection   June 15, 2003
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

I have Norton 2002 anti-virus on windows XP. Norton was disenabled by a virus backdoor.servu.30 and it couldn't detect it. I ran five other anti-virus programs to test which detected this virus, none could delete it as it was a system file, but simply quarantined the file. I used Stop-Sign eAthology which first detected the virus, Tuscan, bitdetector and a couple others. McAfee was the only program that actually deleted the file. Most would have wanted to reinstall their windows operating system and with a year's worth of data, this was a last ditch consideration, so I didn't jump at it.

I reinstalled Norton (after attempting to install a trial version of their firewall which detected changed files) which may have also cleaned up some bad files, however, I did this reinstall prior to McAfee's scan. By the way, if Norton is already installed, McAfee won't load until you remove it, so unfortunately, it doesn't allow you to run both.

McAfee's firewall seems to rely more on you to configure it and decide which web pages to allow internet access, however, it seems to work well enough. I haven't tried Norton's firewall, but it appears to be very thorough from the demo's I've seen. Perhaps I'd rate McAfee higher on the anti-virus detection/removal and Norton on it's firewall...would be nice to use these in conjunction, but I doubt you can.

I would recommend this product. I had no installation problems.