Windows 7’s Annoying McAfee Antivirus Popups – How to Stop Them

I picked up a new Dell the other day along with Windows 7.  Yes, it took me that long to convert from XP to 7, kind of embarrassing for a web guy.  I’ll justify it by the fact that I own a Macbook when I’m at home.  Anyway, I got the huge monitor and computer in, unboxed it excitedly, then powered the sucker on.  What happened next completely annoyed my Windows 7 experience.  No, it wasn’t Windows 7 I have any complaints about, because it actually is more productive than XP, it’s the fact that they disgustingly bundle McAfee with their systems.  I’m not sure if McAfee is partnered with Dell or if they are partnered with Windows 7, but that’s completely irrelevant.  From the minute my computer started I received the most annoying pop-ups ever.  What a different experience than starting up my brand new Macbook a year ago.  It makes you look at Microsoft and just laugh at them for making something that should be exciting, annoying.  Here’s just a few examples about how obtrusive the anti-virus offers and notices are:

Only one of about 4 that popped up when I started up my computer (No lie).  I clicked “close” on this one expecting it to disappear for a few days at least, but guess what happened only a minute later?

I clicked close, but of course it popped up another 10 times within an hour.  Not only are these popups annoying but the program is a little too protective as you’ll see below:

Really?  You’re going to try and block a well-known program that is entirely trusted?  You’ve got to be kidding me!  I’m wondering, is this some kind of a joke that Microsoft is playing against Firefox because IE is horrible?

So I allowed Firefox so McAfee wouldn’t block Firefox from installing.  Everything seems ok now, until I open up my Outlook and there’s more McAfee everywhere.

Ok, so what’s next?  My solution to the problem was to completely remove the program because I couldn’t take it any longer.  But before I install they had to throw one more ridiculous warning in there.

But Don’t You Need an Anti-Virus Program?

Don’t get me wrong, you should have an anti-virus program, but sometimes I feel better of without one.  I can’t stand how it slows your computer down and continues to annoy with popups.  I’m very careful with which website I go to and wipe out my computer every once in a while.  I would rather use Free AVG or even buy AVG just because of how bad McAfee goes about packaging and marketing their product. It actually reminds me of one of those viruses that warns you about updating your anti-virus and makes you check your computer.

Is it just me or do you hate this too?