The setup - I have a brand spanking new Dell 2400 that is maxed out at
1 gig of RAM.  I run the McAfee suite and have all the components
running all the time.  I have 4 users on my machine which is running
XP.  I typically log off every time I am done using the computer.  One
of my users does not.  Also, this user tends to play older cd-rom
games that are disney interactive and tends to not log off OR close
the games when finished with the computer.  When I go back to the
computer and get the login screen (due to inactivity) and choose
myself as the user, everything is very slow and my dsl line will not
connect to any websites.  If I check program manager, nothing is
running but i have 100% cpu usage.  if i do ctrl/alt/del - i get a
message saying GDWH is not responding...do you want to cancel blah
blah blah.  After letting the progress bar go for this and logging off
- when i log back in -  everything is fine if i log in as the other
user, close the program(s) they had running and log them out before I
come back in.  If I come back in without doing that - I still have the
same problem.  I have searched my machine for GDWH.* and GDWH.exe and
GD* and files containing GDWH and have come up empty.  I searched
google and found out little.  I found 3 people that all had Dells
running McAfee in a newsgroup with this problem and no solution.  I
also found someone linking it to Adobe.  When I search "GDWH mcafee" i
got 3 hits.  When I search "GDWH + Adobe" I get 300+ hits.  The games
my other user plays may have coloring sheets that use adobe.  Also,
this may have nothing to do with the other user's habits at all. It
may be simply switching users on XP??  Please Help.  It's driving me
crazy!!

Hopefully I have given you enough info to go on.

Might not help, but it's worth a shot... go to any explorer window
(your C: drive for instance), click on tools > folder options > view
and untick 'hide protected operating system files'. Then try a search
for the filename again and see if it brings anything up.

You can get a screan saver that makes the user log of at
http://winability.com/active-exit/
($29.95)
or you can disable fast user switching (control panel - user accounts
- uncheck use fast user switching) which will disable the ability to
run multiple users at the same time.

The fast user switching is definately a good idea (if you were
administrator, and were allowed to do that), but what I would do if I
were you, I would open up the task manager, and check 'show processes
from all users', which will, let you see all the programs open on the
other user's desktop.  If your task manager is anything like mine, you
should have a collumn that says which user each process is coming
from.  If you don't, go to 'view' (in the task manager, of course),
'select collumns...', and put a check mark next to 'User Name', on the
bottom of the left collumn (for me).  This will let you see which user
started the process.  Usually, the processes for really old programs
are all capital names, and are very deescriptive of the program.
     If you can't find an obvious program to close there, what you
should do, if you can, is go into the offending user's login, and open
the game, and go to the task manager, find out what the process is
named.
     Either way, once you find out what the process'es name is, you
can right click on it, click 'end process', and click 'yes'. Despite
the warning doing this will not cause system instability, and if it
causes any trouble at all, you can just restart your computer, and the
problem will be gone.  (just for reference, I have never had problems
closing uncoroperative programs this way, and have never experienced
the 'System Instability' they warn of)

Hope I helped.

I had this happen again tonight.  It is not being caused by the old
program running.  I went into task manager and started closing
processes that were logged to me instead of system.  i closed one that
started with "mc" that was chewing up the most and my cpu usage went
from 100% to 0%.  I really really think it's a McAfee problem.  I
recently started using the privacy protector because i had guests
coming to the house.  I think it's getting hosed because I log on as
administrator whenever I log into windows.  When I go from the logon
screen to me...it still asks for a password for admin and when i enter
it, it says "user is already logged on through another session".  I
tried looking at hidden apps and it didnt help.  i do not want to turn
off fast switch.  i may disable provacy protector for a few days and
see what happens.  Can I please get some more feedback from users and
experts.  thanks!!  let's trouble shoot this and have the answer right
here for all who have this problem.  I will also jot down the
offending process and post it the next time it happens.

Could you please give me a full process name?  I have a site which can
tell me what it is.  Then we can figure out if it's safe to
permanantally disable it.

Sorry for the double post, but I took a little initiative, and looked
up some possibly pertinent processes.  Here they are:


"ActiveShield Y MCVSSHLD.EXE McAfee VirusScan On-line. See also McAgentExe


ieupdate X MCP****.exe Added as a result of the ASOXY VIRUS! where
**** are random characters


McAgentExe U mcagent.exe From McAfee VirusScan On-line. The Agent is a
red M icon that appears in the Windows system tray or Notification
Area (if you're running Windows XP). If you don't see the agent icon,
VirusScan Online may not be installed"


The first and third sound pretty inportant.  The second one is, well,
a virus, but I doubt it is the problem because it probabally wouldnt
take up alot of processing power for even the slowest of computers.

As a side note, I, personally, don't use a privacy program like what
you mentioned, because they have a tendency to mess with system files
and such, and slow your computer down (though not by as much as you're
speaking of.)

Are you certain the process began with "mc"?

Other users are citing similar symptoms, solved by disabling "MSKSrvr.exe".
This is the executable for McAfee's SpamKiller product.

You mentioned that you are running McAfee software, and that your
current OS is WindowsXP.  This configuration matches those of other
users experiencing unusual processor usage.

"You can probably safely end it and stop it from starting up on each reboot by..

   1. Start -> Run -> services.msc
   2. Locate McAfee SpamKiller Server
   3. Double click on it
   4. Change 'Startup Type' to either Manual, or disabled."

Source: http://forums.devshed.com/showthread.php?mode=hybrid&t=136657

Of course, this may not be the same issue you're afflicted with... but
it's one more possibility.  Hope it helps!

Well, I answered my own question......  after doing many experiments
tonight, I found the culprit.  MSCIFAPP.exe    I systematically
started closing processes until I got my machine back.  I swore last
night that it was a MC and not MS.  I first looked for the SpamKiller
but realized that I dont have that, just the first 3 components in the
suite.  Once I tagged the little bugger, I did some research and found
this on a QA site:

Background task which is part of McAfee?s Privacy Service.  McAfee?s
Privacy Service is a product which provides Private Information
protection while surfing the Internet, popup and popunder
advertisements blocking, cookies blocking and management, website
filtering and blocking (e.g: for families with children), web sessions
& chat monitoring and logging, Internet access restrictions, and age
based access levels.

Recommendation :   
We do not yet know what this task actually does, but we do know that
disabling prevents the Privacy Service from functioning properly.  
Leave alone therefore.   That said, at the time of writing,
13?Dec-2003, this task is not the best behaved task and too often
either generates illegal operations at boot?up or consumes excessive
amounts of CPU time causing the PC to slow down significantly as a
direct result.   Make sure, therefore, that you regularly check the
McAfee site for software updates  (you can do that through the icon in
the System Tray).


----------------------------------------------------------------
I even said in my original post that I thought it started happeniong
after installing the privacy component.  Thanks to all that tried to
help!!!  Your questions made me keep coming back and being more
tenacious.  Why the heck hasn't McAfee fixed that problem???????  I
have a GIG of ram and a 2.2 chip, you'd think one stupid program
couldnt cause such problems.  For those interested...even after I
killed the process, if I let the other user signed on and I came back
in without killing their session...the process restarted upon logging
on.  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  I SAY, BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, McAfee!!