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Quarantine Files
- Thread starter mitstoshi
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You have 10,300 quarantined files
I'd do some investigation into what the files are, as that is beyond excessive.
Could not open any of these files. Any idea?
Do yourself a favor and get rid of McAfee. There is no way you have 10,300 files that are viruses or malware. Very likely McAfee is quarantining files that are needed by macOS and are read only. Download the free Malwarebytes and use it instead. If you trash those 10,300 files you will probably trash macOS at the same time.
Thanks! McAfee Internet Security software packages were provided free by my Internet Provider (COX). I will try free Malwarebytes and disable McAfee for the time being to see what would happen!!
As others have said, it is extremely unlikely that those 10,300 files are 'bad' but out of curiosity, can you show us what some of the files are? McAfee is well known for being an absolute dog mess of an app, it causes more problems than it solves, but it shouldn't be quarantining system files so I wonder what it has actually quarantined.
Does McAfee tell you what those files are? It looks like it has renamed them as part of its quarantine efforts.
That said, if they were important, you'd probably have noticed them being missing already - plus the size being 37KB for each one is a bit suspect - they're likely nothing of importance.
If I were you, I'd delete or restore them depending on what McAfee tells you they are (most likely delete them). Check here for how to do that:
https://service.mcafee.com/webcenter/portal/cp/home/articleview?articleId=TS100843
Once you're done with that, uninstall McAfee as per:
https://service.mcafee.com/webcenter/portal/cp/home/articleview?articleId=TS101226
You can run scans with Malwarebytes if you're concerned about anything on your mac. I personally wouldn't bother with their premium offering but you might decide otherwise.
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I strongly advise you not to delete or remove anything before making a bootable clone of everything. Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper both have trial versions before buying.
Using Mcafee delete software, it shows no existence of any quarantine files at all locations on my iMac for me to delete or do anything. But when I got out of the Mcafee delete software, the 10,300 files are still there in the quarantine folder on my iMac. So what is going on?
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I do have a bootable clone of HD. The problem is it took a long time or almost forever to copy those 10,300 quarantine files to my clone HD. That was why I started this thread.
The reality is, if McAfee had renamed and moved some important system files, your Mac would most likely show issues on booting, if it booted at all. The point of the quarantine operation is that the files become totally isolated and unusable - stopping anything malicious in its tracks.
If you've got a bootable backup, I'd just go ahead and delete these files, then McAfee. The fact that they're all 37KB (does it look like all 10,300 are 37KB?) makes me think its just some trash that McAfee has created, or something like a cache file that McAfee has been repeatedly quarantining, just for it to be recreated by the system and quarantined yet again.
If you've got a bootable backup, I'd just go ahead and delete these files, then McAfee. The fact that they're all 37KB (does it look like all 10,300 are 37KB?) makes me think its just some trash that McAfee has created, or something like a cache file that McAfee has been repeatedly quarantining, just for it to be recreated by the system and quarantined yet again.