Hey,

So just recently, my pc started giving me these messages a little after start up saying that my computer is not fully protected (the messages are from McAfee SecurityCenter, which came installed on my Dell Inspiron 6000 for free). When I click on the tray icon to see what the problem is, it tells me that parts of my computer are not protected and the "computer and files"/"email and internet" sections are highlighted in yellow. When I click "fix now" it processes for a bit and tells me that I need to reinstall McAfee, and sometimes it tells me that my software is out of date/my subscription has run out. It may well be that my pre-payed McAfee subscription from Dell has finally run out and to be honest I don't mind all that much if I have to uninstall McAfee... It wasn't that great. I don't want to leave myself completely unprotected though, so my questions are these:

If this is just a bug, how do I fix it and get McAfee SecurityCenter working properly again? If it's NOT a bug, do any of you know what the deal is considering it's been telling me a few different things? Do you recommend uninstalling McAfee and just "acquiring" another program? If so, which one?

I know a bunch of you don't even use anti-virus software, but I'm kind of paranoid. Just having something that doesn't take up too many resources, that can monitor my computer's safety fairly well would put me at ease.

If it says the subscription ran out then that's probably it.

Your anti-virus still works, it just won't update. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Yeah. I just tried to remove it and after I clicked "remove" it gave me a warning saying that I still had a valid subscription to these products and that removing them would reduce my PC's protection. So I guess my subscription is still good. WTF is going on? I'm kinda thinking that that getting a new anti-virus program anyway would be a good idea, considering how resource-heavy McAfee is.

The messages are about the fact that you have the subscription and until this point its still a valid one. But to go further and get more updates against viruses you need to pay more.

Screw that. I'm acquiring something.

Its what I did when I got those messages.

I uninstalled McAfee and set myself up with Kaspersky... I hear it's good. If it proves to be just as big a resource hog as McAfee was then I might just go without Antivirus software for now. I don't visit sites that are likely to be infected and I'd say my downloading habits are safe. What do you guys think?

AVG has worked fine for me so far. Granted its not the most useful and the comodo firewall i have normally warns me if anything suspicious is going on. I think you should have a basic anti-virus to protect you from worms, but besides that if you are worried about resource hogging then I would stop at that.

Why don't you use Avast!

As long as you aren't stupid, and didn't steal anything from the government or something you should be fine. I haven't used anti-virus software or firewalls or anything of that type in years and I haven't had a infection since. Granted I do install spybot and AVG every now and again whenever something feels off.

I did until it pulled a McAfee and said that my free trial period of 3 months or 30 days or whatever was up and bugged me at every start up.
Unless that was directed at Downloaded in which case, there is my argument against.

you can get a free key. go to the site and register for the home edition.