Member Avatar for willowmoon

Windows 7 Action Center is repeatedly telling me that my Mcafee program is either not working or has stopped working X number of time. When I go to my Mcafee Total Protection screen it is telling me that everything is fine and that my computer is protected. I have run a virus scan and sat through it, watching it the whole time to make sure it did not stop -- it didn't. According to Mcafee's logs, there have been no problems. Just to be extra sure I went to their tech support and ran the virtual technician to see if it detected anything and it said everything was good!

I have done all of my updates for both Windows and Mcafee.

Any suggestions as to why this conflict is occuring and what to do about it? Should I just ignore what the Action center is telling me about Mcafee? I know that there are those who don't like Mcafee, but I've been using it for years. I first broke down and paid for an A/V years ago after my "frankenputer" was hit pretty hard and I've stuck with them ever since now that we have two now Dells. The other computer also gets the same message in the action center, although it seems like it doesn't occure as often.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Edited by willowmoon because: typo
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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Ancient Dragon

Dani AI

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A short, practical primer and checklist for the situation describes. When the McAfee UI and its Virtual Technician report “all clear” while Windows Action Center flags the product, the problem is most often how Windows is detecting (or failing to detect) the McAfee service rather than the antivirus engine itself. seeing no warnings on a different machine suggests this is environment-specific (different McAfee build/settings, an OEM image, Windows updates, or a transient service/registration hiccup).

Quick checklist (do these first)

  • Open Control Panel -> Action Center and note the exact message and which component is flagged (antivirus, antispyware, firewall). Record the exact wording and time it appears.
  • Check McAfee status and license in its console. A valid, current license and up-to-date definitions reduce the chance the UI is wrong.
  • In Services (Start -> services.msc) confirm McAfee-related services are set to Automatic and are Running; restart them once.
  • Restart the Windows Security Center service (wscsvc) and then observe Action Center for changes.
  • Temporarily disable redundant security products or leftover trial software; two AV products can lead to intermittent registration problems.

If the basic checks do not fix it, try these advanced steps from an elevated command prompt (run as Administrator):

sc query wscsvc
net stop wscsvc
net start wscsvc
winmgmt /verifyrepository
winmgmt /salvagerepository

Run the WMI commands only if comfortable; they rebuild WMI’s repository which is used by Action Center to discover providers.

If the message persists after those steps, perform a McAfee repair or clean uninstall/reinstall (use McAfee’s official removal utility for a full clean) and collect relevant Event Viewer entries (System and Application logs) showing times when Action Center created the alert. Those logs plus the exact Action Center wording are the best evidence for McAfee support or a Windows technician to resolve a registration mismatch. Caution: turning off Action Center virus notifications hides the symptom but does not fix the underlying registration/service issue.

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

I am running 64-bit Windows 7 and McAfee with no such Action Center messages. I also have a custom-built PC.

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