Iain Young

Hi folks,

After reading all the good reports about the McAfee products on here, I thought I'd give it a go, so I bought / downloaded it from the McAfee website over the weekend. I have however, been having problems getting it to work

The virus checker seems to be up and running ok, and the firewall now seems to be configured ok (although it didn't know about various internet enabled programs which I had to set up to allow access to the internet - including it's own update program!! - not very impressive IMO). This biggest problem I have however is with the spam blocking utility.

Summary of problems....

• When the pc boots up, and the McAfee splash banner is shown, it states that the spam module is not running, yet when I go into the control center, it says that it is.
• It seems a bit hit and miss as to when it downloads email from the server. I've got it set to every 10 minutes, but sometimes it takes far longer than this, and sometimes it just doesn't bother at all (at least not until I reboot)
• It does not seem to integrate with Outlook 2000 at all. The online help states that there should be a McAfee spam toolbar installed, but there isn't (only a virus scan toolbar button is present).
• Seemingly no way of getting it to download mail from the server on command, so if someone has sent me an email, I have to wait until the program decides that it is going to download it rather than when I press send / receive in outlook.
• Annoying that the blocked spam is held inside the spam program and not inside outlook, meaning that I have to invoke two programs to check my email. Norton anti-spam works quite nicely by filtering the spam email into a spam folder within outlook, so it's easy to process stuff. I just assumed this would work in a similar way.
• Finally, when it is working, it only seems to catch about 1 out of every 20-30 spam emails I get anyway, so it seems a bit pointless.

This was installed on a fresh copy of xp pro (with all latest updates etc), and office 2000 pro installed (also with all the latest updates).

I think I'm going to uninstall all this and go back to Norton because it seemed to work much better than the McAfee stuff, (just a shame I wsted 50 quid buying the McAfee software ), but before do, I was wondering if anyone out there was using it successfully, or whether anyone has any solutions to the above problems.

Thanks,
Iain

JackClark

1) Go to Control Panel | Services and make sure that the Spamkiller server is running.
2) Could be related to the above
3) http://uk.mcafee.com/common/en-gb/re.../userguide.asp Documents the intergration with Outlook.
4) I'm pretty sure mine checks when I click send and recieve. At least it's seamless on my machine.
5) You can choose to have your mail marked as [Spam] them move it to a folder in Outlook
6) It catches far more for me and others, new rules come out all the time, but so do new spam techniques.

Iain Young

Hi Jack...
Yes it is, because it does periodically download mail from the server, (I've checked via task manager as well).

All this does is to talk about the spam toolbar in outlook. I haven't got one. It only installed an antivirus toolbar (I can only assume the installer never installed the spam toolbar for some reason - reinstalling the product doesn't help either)

Mine most definitely doesn't. I suspect this may be related to 3)

Think I might give up on the spam killer as a bad job and try one of the other filters available on the market instead as the McAfee does not work for me

JackClark

From www.mcafeehelp.com

Why can't I see the SpamKiller 5 tool bar buttons in Microsoft Outlook?

NOTE: SpamKiller 5 will only integrate properly with Microsoft Outlook 98, Outlook 2000 and Outlook XP. Additionally, a MAPI (Corporate/Workgroup) account must be setup in SpamKiller 5 before other accounts can be added for this feature to be available. Verify that the account you are trying to setup is a MAPI account.

Buttons maybe hidden

Look on the right side of your Outlook tool bar. If you see arrows pointing off the screen, click on the arrows to locate the buttons.

Services may not be activated

1. Open Outlook.
2. Click on TOOLS, then OPTIONS.
3. Click on the OTHER tab.
4. Click on the ADVANCED OPTIONS button.
5. Click on the ADD-IN MANAGER button.
6. Verify that the following services have a check mark:

McAfee SpamKiller
McAfee SpamKiller Exchange Extensions
7. Click on the OK button.

Let me know if you have trouble getting a refund.

Iain Young

Thanks Jack.

All the add-ins are added-in and active. Seems as though the trouble is that I'm using Outlook 2000 at home to access my POP accounts, (not MAPI), and for some strange reason, the Spamkiller software does not support this configuration (and so is pretty useless for me).

Do you know if this support is planned for a future release / patch / upgrade? I know Norton already supports this with their anti-spam stuff because I've used it, (filters pop mail into folders within Outlook, and you get toolbar buttons to press to manipulate the mail etc).

I think a refund is out of the question because I want to keep using the rest of the suite (which all seems to be working fine). It's just the spam killer that is not doing the job..

Iain

JackClark

Outlook is mentioned heavily within the PRD for the next version due for release around September time. I can't be specific as these change daily at the minute.

Iain Young

Ok thanks. In that case I think I'll wait and see what appears in a couple of months or so

Iain

JackClark

For now I'd suggest setting up Spamkiller so that it sends spam to Outlook marked as [spam], you can then setup a rule in Outlook that moves it to a spam folder. My copy is set to check every 7 minutes but doesn't seem to mind checking more often. You can up the detection levels by percentage - not sat at my home machine now, but I belive it's in settings, second button left from the top - but this could of course lead to more false detections.

Iain Young

Thanks, I'll give it a go tonight....