Topic: I hate going through this at the beginning of every semester

[Mr_Tricorder]

Well, I just moved back into my dorm room for the spring semester at Texas A&M.  I got my computer set up and booted up Windows, planning on updating Windows and AVG since my computer has been disconnected from the internet for about a month, and I found out that I had to go through TAMUSCAN again.  TAMUSCAN is a program that the A&M computer services developed about a year and a half ago to help with campus network security.  At the beginning of each semester before your computer is allowed to access the internet, or even most of the TAMU network, you have to download and run TAMUSCAN, which is basically a virus scan and removal tool.  However, it takes forever to complete.  Last semester, it took nearly twelve hours to finish  !  Then it automatically sets your computer to automatically download and install updates, which irks me a little that it goes and changes settings like that, but I already have it set for that, and since service pack 2 makes that the default setting, it's not that big of a deal.  Here's the big deal (apart from taking up the whole day running a virus scan); It then installs McAfee sofware on your computer.  There's nothing you can do about it.  If you want to use the internet on campus, you have to let it install McAfee  .  I decided to restart my computer and boot up in SUSE Linux instead.  Apparently, they're only focusing on Windows users as potential security threats, because I'm not having a single problem with using the internet right now.  I think I'm going to let TAMUSCAN to run over night and then update everything and uninstall McAfee in the morning.

[Dracho]

I run the credit card data security program for an Oil & as company.  We require employees to use virus protection on machines they use to VPN into our network, and we require personal firewalls on laptops.  Starting very soon, if you are one of our employees using your own machine and you have a wireless router in your house, we are going to require you to have WEP enabled.  Don't do any of the above and you don't connect.


It's just the way the world is going.

[Mr_Tricorder]

I don't really mind the idea of having to run their scan at the beginning of each semester.  I just wish that it didn't take the whole day to run.  I've tried several different antivirus programs, and none of them take nearly as long to finish as this one does.  The main thing that I really have a problem with is being required to install a particular antivirus program, regardless of what program I'm already using, whether I like it or not.  I tried McAfee before and, in my opinion, it's almost as bad as Norton (I agree with everything Bonk has said about Norton in his thread about it).  Plus, they didn't used to require that you install McAfee.  Just as long as you were using antivirus software that was up to date.  If they detected that you weren't using antivirus software, or that it was badly out of date, they would block you from the network (which made it somewhat difficult to update your software so you could get unblocked).

[Tus-XC]

your lucky, our laptops we never got the choice to what would be installed on them... lets put it this way i have an adminstrator accoutn supposadly, however there are things that they locked me out of through the network.  now this pisses me off to no end cause i don't like not having full control of screwing up my own computer .  not to mention all the shyt software they installed slows ur computer down something awful.  its a good thing though its not required to get online though... soi just plug it into my other computer and its back to easy browsing

[Dracho]

I don't really mind the idea of having to run their scan at the beginning of each semester.  I just wish that it didn't take the whole day to run.  I've tried several different antivirus programs, and none of them take nearly as long to finish as this one does.  The main thing that I really have a problem with is being required to install a particular antivirus program, regardless of what program I'm already using, whether I like it or not.  I tried McAfee before and, in my opinion, it's almost as bad as Norton (I agree with everything Bonk has said about Norton in his thread about it).  Plus, they didn't used to require that you install McAfee.  Just as long as you were using antivirus software that was up to date.  If they detected that you weren't using antivirus software, or that it was badly out of date, they would block you from the network (which made it somewhat difficult to update your software so you could get unblocked).

Probably takes so long because they are scanning your drive over the network, rather than dropping the .exe to your hard drive and running it locally.

[Mr_Tricorder]

I don't really mind the idea of having to run their scan at the beginning of each semester.  I just wish that it didn't take the whole day to run.  I've tried several different antivirus programs, and none of them take nearly as long to finish as this one does.  The main thing that I really have a problem with is being required to install a particular antivirus program, regardless of what program I'm already using, whether I like it or not.  I tried McAfee before and, in my opinion, it's almost as bad as Norton (I agree with everything Bonk has said about Norton in his thread about it).  Plus, they didn't used to require that you install McAfee.  Just as long as you were using antivirus software that was up to date.  If they detected that you weren't using antivirus software, or that it was badly out of date, they would block you from the network (which made it somewhat difficult to update your software so you could get unblocked).

Probably takes so long because they are scanning your drive over the network, rather than dropping the .exe to your hard drive and running it locally.

Is there any reason why they wouldn't do that, or are they just being stupid and/or apathetic to the students?