McAfee deletes HP Discovery Probe installation files - (PUP.g)

Document ID:KM494015
Creation Date:03-Sep-2008
Modified Date:03-Sep-2008
- Micro Focus Products:
  universal cmdb

Question

McAfee Anti-virus software detects Discovery Probe as a Potentially Unwanted Program (PUP)

Answer

Information about Potentially Unwanted Program.generic (PUP.g) can be found at the link below

http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_141410.htm

According to the document "Unlike viruses and trojans, PUPs do not damage systems maliciously. In most cases these programs are installed unknowingly or unwantedly, as they could be bundled with another software."

McAffee Antivirus program consider Discovery Probe program as a PUP because WinPcap_3_0_a2.exe is bundled with Discovery Probe , WinPcap allows application to capture and tranmit network packets.

The above aritcle by McAffee also has instruction on Disabling the Detection of PUP. McAffee needs to be configured and Probe install directory and running instance i.e. discovery_probe.exe needs to be added to the exclusion list in AntiVirus software.

WARN: Discovery probe may not function properly and exhibit strange behavior if not excluded from Anti-virus Programs, Anti-virus software can delete important files needed for proper operations of discovery probe.