HELP!! Installed McAfee Viruscan- problems (1 Viewer)

[David_Jr]

I installed McAfee Viruscan 7.0 that I just purchased from their site (boxed version) and when I rebooted the computer to finish the install the computer won't go past the Windows 98 screen. I can do Ctl Alt Del and it will try to reboot, but just keeps stalling in the same place. Any suggestions? I was running McAfee Ver 4.0 before with no apparent problems for the last 2 yrs.

 

[Kevin P]

Can you reboot in safe mode? Hit F8 just as the "Starting Windows 98" appears, right before the Windows splash screen. You should get a menu with Safe mode as one of the options. Then in safe mode, uninstall Mcafee and then reboot in normal mode and see if you're ok.

 

[David_Jr]

I could not reboot in safe mode. I had to run my HP rescue disk as much as I hated to. Apparently the problem is not with the new McAfee, it's with the one I had to delete to install the new one. My system is still looking for the old version even though it's not there. It is also saying that several .dll files are not available: MCARCHIV.DLL; MCKRNL32.DLL; SHUTIL.DLL. How do I get these missing DLL files back? They didn't reinstall with the rescue disk as the old version of McAfee did not either. If I found them on the rescue disk using a search function, where would they go? I hope I'm not sunk. At least my computer is booting up and coming on now. Going through the tedious task of reinstalling everything .

 

[David_Jr]

What a mess!! It's showing the old version (4.0.5) in the startup scroll (presumably in DOS?). I have no idea how to get rid of it and the computer did not come with an original disc for the program. I would have thought that the reinstall would have put it back on, but there is no sign of it except on startup. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Is this something that is going to have to be troubleshot by McAfee or HP would you think?

 

[John_Berger]

Check the autoexec.bat (yes, Windows 98 still can use one) to see if there is a reference to the McAfee software. Older versions of McAfee will put an entry there to check for viruses on the boot sector before going into Windows. I'm assuming that they still do with v7.0. If it's stopping at that point, that could be your problem. I've had this happen before as well.

For now, boot from a bootable disk, edit the autoexec.bat, comment out any references to McAfee, and try booting again.

 

[David_Jr]

John,

For now, boot from a bootable disk, edit the autoexec.bat, comment out any references to McAfee, and try booting again.

I think I need more specific instructions to try this. I have never done anything like that before and I'm not comfortable trying it. How do you "comment out"? Thanks so much for the reply though.

 

[John_Berger]

You either put a semi-colon or a pound sign (#) in front of the line to be commented out. (I don't recall exactly which but I think that the pound sign is the one.) At that point, any line with the pound sign at the beginning will be ignored. Save it, and try again.

 

[Kevin P]

Actually, in bat files you use "rem" (short for remark) in front of the line to be "commented out". So if you have the line:

scan32 c: /b

and you change it to

rem scan32 c: /b

then that line won't be run.
"Commenting out" is a popular trick among programmers when you want to disable a section of code in a program without deleting the code. Effectively you're making the lines of code into a comment, which is ignored when compiling or running the program.
KJP

 

[John_Berger]

Actually, in bat files you use "rem" (short for remark) in front of the line to be "commented out". So if you have the line:

AH! That's right! It's been a while since I've had to work with autoexec.bat and config.sys. I guess that I'm just too used to UNIX configuration files.

 

[David_Jr]

I fixed it!!! I was able to edit the autoexec.bat and remark out the offending line and that worked perfectly. I figured out how to do the edit from an article in "Smart Computing in Plain English". Also I was able to remove the programs from startup which were causing loading errors by editing the startup configuration. I did this by going to Start, run and typing msconfig and clicking ok. It was actually quite easy. Thank you all for your suggestions which ultimately put me on the right trail!!