Macafee won't connect to internet to update

Wondering if someone here can help me out. I have a Mac running a windows XP partition on which the college IT crowd installed Macafee ages back. For as long as I can remember now everytime I start up my XP partition I get a Macafee popup saying
"We cannot check your security status now because your PC is not connected to the internet or the MAcafee security scan is temporarily unavailable. Please connect to the internet and click retry or try again later"

I went to run the Macafee website's virtual technician and it too says that it cannot connect to the internet. Anyone know what the problem might be? I've been considering uninstalling Macafee altogether and getting Avast instead as my XP partition is very slow to start up and I'm thinking MAcafee may not be helping it.

 

Mcafee is a virtual virus in itself.
It's a bloatware that slows down the computer and it's not very effective in terms of virus detection.

Use Avast, Avira or MSE (only pick one).
Just do yourself a favor and remove Mcafee immediately.

 

As above, Mcafee should come with a health warning, prolonged use will make your eyes bleed and computer blow up!!

 

And not necessarily in that order.

 

Thanks for the input guys, I was about the remove it but I'd said I'd check with the wise old sages at notebookreview to be sure. Wouldn't dream of putting McAfee on a laptop myself but the (not at all competent) IT crowd in college insisted when I got my laptop. They also insisted on partitioning my HD 50/50 in Bootcamp meaning I am now running out of space on OSX where I store my music etc, and have over 100gb free on the XP partition which I only need for Word documents and such, oh well!! Thanks again

 

If you're only using Windows for MS office, you can use NeoOffice on the Mac, which is a great, free office suite. Alternatively, if you have to use Microsoft Office, just run XP on a virtual machine using Parallels, VMWare Fusion, or Virtualbox.

 

The IT crowd at college...
Seriously... if they are in IT and recommending/insisting on something, then they better make sure it's not going to bog down one's system.
Mcaffee had some merit in the beginning if I'm not mistaken (I used it in it's early days, over 10 years ago), but it progressively got worse.

Aside from that... if you want more space on your MacOS partition, you should be able to re-partition your HDD with a program such as GParted or another one that has re-partitioning boot tool.

Btw... who partitions the HDD 50/50?
I have 2 partitions on my laptop... one is for the OS/programs (that's about 75GB), and the other is for storage of data (which is the rest of my 500GB hdd... along with an external 1TB 2.5" usb HDD that serves as a backup).

Now I know that Macs can be quite reliable and all, but so are Windows, and it still doesn't hurt to be cautious from time to time by storing your music, files and data on a separate partition, or at least a backup HDD.

Why do you use Windows XP though?
If it's not for something too crucial, then you can either get away with alternative programs or just use VirtualMachine.
Unless of course we are talking about games or heavier software that relies on functions that aren't entirely too good in VM... in that case, virtual environment is not really the best solution.