My McAfee representative hadn't heard of the problem, but opened a trouble ticket for me and started checking further. I ran some tests, collected a few files, and sent them in to McAfee. Since one of my test subjects had reported problems with her Notes 6.5.2 client, I included information from her machine. Two days later I learned McAfee techs had replicated the problem.

Since shutting off policies in ePolicy Orchestrator didn't seem to work, I built a modified installation package using McAfee Installation Designer 8.5 and excluded the email scanning components. Then I checked it into the ePO repository to replace the original version of VSE 8.5i.

When my test victims, er, "subjects", complain about mail locking up, I use ePO to remove the original package and install the modified version. Installing, or not installing, the Anti-Spyware package with VSE doesn't change the problem with the Notes client.

For a non-ePO installation of VSE 8.5i, select Custom installation and exclude Lotus Notes E-mail scanning to do the same thing, as shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C


Turn off the feature. Roll over picture for a larger image.

McAfee now has a fix for the lockups, VSE85HF317217, in the form of an executable run at the workstation. You probably need to ask McAfee for it. Or you can wait for Patch 1 to be released.

My machine appears to be fixed, but the mail scanner seems to have limited capabilities. There are 40 or more .NSF files on my workstation harddrive but the mail scanner only finds four of them. So, after complaining to McAfee, I'm probably going to deploy VSE 8.5i without mail scan, despite the fix.

David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.