AboutCarolyn Meinel Expertise I cover Windows, Unix, TCP/IP and Ethernet security questions. I do not cover Mac, Palm Pilot, or other networking issues.
Experience Books by Carolyn Meinel: wrote a chapter for The Hacking of America book (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567204600/happyhacker)
My article Code Red for the Web for Scientific American was reprinted in the book Best American Science Writing 2002 (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060936509/happyhacker). My book The Happy Hacker: A Guide to Mostly Harmless Hacking is now in 4th edition with a Japanese edition (see http://happyhacker.org/hhbook/).
Question Iam not computer savy. need your patience. I downloaded an antivirus program today (ClamWin). It seemed that after the download the problem occurred. the problem being that I am unable to open McAfee Security Center or McAfee Easy Network. clicking on their icons or on the ballon on the bottom left of the screen fails to open McAfee program. I then uninstalled ClamWin and the McAfee still would not open. any ideas on what could have occurred?
carl
Answer Ouch! Running two different antivirus programs at the same time is never a good idea. In your case it sounds like ClamWin damaged McAfee.
First of all, I recommend that you don't ever install ClamWin again. In the only test of ClamWIn I could find, it detected less than half of all common forms of malware (see http://www.virus.gr/portal/en/node/28). By contrast, McAfee found over 90% of these evil programs. In this same test, the top defenders were:
1. Kaspersky version 7.0.0.43 beta - 99.23%
2. Kaspersky version 6.0.2.614 - 99.13%
3. Active Virus Shield by AOL version 6.0.0.308 - 99.13%
4. ZoneAlarm with KAV Antivirus version 7.0.337.000 - 99.13%
5. F-Secure 2007 version 7.01.128 - 98.56%
6. BitDefender Professional version 10 - 97.70%
7. BullGuard version 7.0.0.23 - 96.59%
If you want to get McAfee working again, I suggest you uninstall it and then reinstall it and run your updates. Alternatively, you can try the F-Secure Internet security suite (which includes a firewall and spyware protection). It offers a free thirty day trial: https://store.f-secure.com/cgi-bin/dlreg/ml=EN?ID=FSISTB&desid=TRIAL
