www2.secureie.com - McAfee virus

I could not find a reference to this in any google groups, so I'm
doing my civic duty.
This gets good, so read on.
I got a message from my McAfee software(the little "M" in the task
bar) that an update was available. I've had McAfee for 3 years now and
thought nothing of it.
I would then begin to notice that the fan on my laptop would roar to
life and stay that way. The fan was doing its job, as it should. It
was cooling the CPU, which was pegged at 100%. The laptop became a
stove top sitting on my lap.

I noticed in task manager that certain processes were hoggin memory,
but none of them had an "mc" on the front of thier name, so I had no
reason to suspect McAfee. The file that was hogging most of the memory
was svchost.exe, which is a valid Microsoft system file called
Servicehost.exe. I shut down all windows, rebooted several times and
watched my pc and the processes in the TaskManager. Thats when I
noticed that the moment McAfee came to life and put its little "M" in
my task bar, my CPU would peg at 100%.
I clicked the little "M" which takes you to the Security manager. I
disabled everything I could. Rebooted. Problem solved. CPU was back at
4% or lower and the fan was nice and quite. Went back into Security
manager which now had a "Fix All" button at the top. I clicked it, and
the CPU pegged at 100% and the fan roared to life. I also got a new
little icon in the task bar...a little red circle with an "X".

I knew I'd found my problem, which pissed me off. But it gets better.
I right clicked the little "M" and there was an option for customer
support. When I did that...it took me to this bull***, bogus page:
~http://www2.secureie.com/c/102/mcafee/lp4/0304_siepie_lp_02.asp?
s=468_2137~
If you're curious and visit the web address above, dont click any of
the links on it. Its not a trustworthy page.

Its an adware page for products called Secure IE and Private IE. The
page had very cheezy animations on it(animated .GIF) and I knew this
was obviously not the McAfee Support web site. I went to the real
McAfee support site and searched their online forums. I found many
entries regarding my very issue. Each a bit different, but all the
same; CPU pegged at 100 percent and the machine's fan roaring to life.
Lots of the folks posted that they had tried getting support and some
even had some fixes that they say worked. The McAfee programmers were
in the posts as well, so they did indeed respond to the posts. One
person person couldn't get fixed up no matter what he tried. The
others seemed to be able to get fixed by un-installing McAfee and then
running a small program that the McAfee support gave to them. Then
they'd reinstall McAfee and it would work for them.

The problem is....this is an anti-virus program that couldn't detect a
virus on itself. I would think that at the very least, it should know
when IT was being eaten alive.
Luckily, my online renew is up in August,2007(next month) and I got
online with an Account rep, thur their chat, and unsubscribed.

No software is an island unto itself , but because McAfee an anti-
virus program, I cant give them any slack at all.

.