McAfee hates angband

[sandtrap]

I just had the weirdest thing happen.

My microsoft desktop just died so I purchased a new computer. I removed all of the crapware and was looking for an antivirus package. My DSL provider usually has a free option so I installed it. It was McAfee.

After I installed it the angband.exe process would start but the window would not appear.

McAfee didn't make it easy to find how to exclude angband.exe from its evil grasp. In fact the Mcafee log didn't even say it blocked anything.

Then I uninstalled McAfee and the problem went away.

[Zikke]

I wonder if there's a white list option in McAfee that would allow the window to pop up if you entered that program name.

[buzzkill]

Don't play without an anti-virus.

Try !Avast or AVG, both fine free anti-virus programs. Though AVG does have a tendency to detect false-positives on hacks/cheats/cracks.

[sandtrap]

yes I have anti-virus installed

Yes I did immediately install other anti-virus.

I am an extremely competent with software and computers. But the McAfee package I had installed did not have any whitelist area that I could find.

AND IT DID NOT CLAIM THAT IT WAS BLOCKING ANGBAND.

If it was blocking it there should have been a log entry. So in my opinion McAfee just was an awful program that for some reason kept the window from reaching the desktop. Maybe this was a reduced feature version for the DSL freebie and not as capable as the paid for package.

I really don't know what the real answer is.

[andrewdoull]

Yes I did immediately install other anti-virus.

I am an extremely competent with software and computers. But the McAfee package I had installed did not have any whitelist area that I could find.

AND IT DID NOT CLAIM THAT IT WAS BLOCKING ANGBAND.

If it was blocking it there should have been a log entry. So in my opinion McAfee just was an awful program that for some reason kept the window from reaching the desktop. Maybe this was a reduced feature version for the DSL freebie and not as capable as the paid for package.

I really don't know what the real answer is.

I suspect it is because the Angband executable is UPX compressed. Try turning of heuristic scanning - it may be the case that we should stop using UPX compression, because it gets flagged as malware; and the benefits of reducing the size of the .exe file are less significant these days.

Andrew

[sandtrap]

UPX compression

OK, I will reinstall McAfee this weekend and try to turn off heuristic scanning on the realtime scanner.

I will also try to figure out again where the whitelist is.

There should be a way for this to work without changing the distribution.

Thanks for the idea.

[takkaria]

OK, I will reinstall McAfee this weekend and try to turn off heuristic scanning on the realtime scanner.

I will also try to figure out again where the whitelist is.

There should be a way for this to work without changing the distribution.

Thanks for the idea.

Angband releases and nightlies from now on won't be using UPX. (Or at least this will be the case when I can commit code to the dev server.)

[sandtrap]

OK, I will reinstall McAfee this weekend and try to turn off heuristic scanning on the realtime scanner.

I will also try to figure out again where the whitelist is.

There should be a way for this to work without changing the distribution.

Thanks for the idea.

OK I reinstalled McAfee. And angband runs fine. As far as I know I did nothing differently.

I am still using the same binaries for angband that I used during my first attempt. I do not know what has changed. I am sure Microsoft caused this problem somehow!!!

Thanks to everyone for the ideas. And don't change anything in the builds (unless you really want to).