How to Disable McAfee Security Center on Vista Home Premium

McAfee is an Internet security software package which consists of several different services such as antivirus protection, a firewall and spam filters. McAfee is a popular program that comes installed on many new major brand PCs like Dell. One of the main drawbacks of McAfee is that it can run many background processes on your computer, which can hamper computing speed, especially if you are trying to do RAM and processor intensive activities such as media editing or gaming. In these cases, you may wish to disable McAfee Security Center to free up system resources.

Instructions

Disable Security Center Services using the Taskbar

1. Double click on the McAfee icon on the windows Vista taskbar. By default it should appear in the lower right hand corner of your screen.

2. Click "Advanced."

3. Click "Configure."

4. Click on each item on the top left of the window to open the settings options for each McAfee service and disable each one. This method does not completely disable McAfee Security Center, but by stopping all of its services, you will gain a similar amount of system resources.

Disable McAfee at Startup

1. Click "Start."

2. Type "msconfig" in the search field and press "Enter."

3. Click on the "Startup" tab.

4. Click on "Startup Item" to sort the list alphabetically, then uncheck all items related to McAfee.

5. Click "Apply," "Ok," and then restart your computer.

Tips & Warnings

• McAfee can be heavy on system resources such as RAM; if McAfee is interfering with your normal computing on a consistent basis, consider using a different antivirus program. There are several free antivirus programs with quality comparable to McAfee, such as AVG Free, Avast and Avira AntiVir.

References

• McAfee User Guide
• McAfee Help Info