McAfee active shield warning

[pokerswami]

Frustrated by the following......

Basic un-savvy computer user.

1 1/2 year old Dell Dimension 4700. Windows XP Home Edition, always kept up to date.
I regularly update and use Ad-Aware se and Spybot – Search & Destroy 1.3.
I have been using one or another version of McAfee anti-virus since the computer was new.
I spend 99% of my time online as a Limited user, except that I run Absolute Poker under “Run as” the Administrator while I’m logged on as a Limited user. For who knows why, Absolute requires that it be run by the Administrator.

A few days ago, I updated Windows, which “upgraded” Internet Explorer to 7.0.5730.11.
I also updated Adobe Reader to 7.0.
I also re-downloaded AOL Safety and Security Center, which is McAfee provided virus protection, spyware protection, and firewall. It had been kept regularly updated anyway.
All of this was not necessarily in this order.

Now, during log-on, I frequently get a warning from McAfee active shield saying that it has found a suspect file on my computer and that I should do a scan. This has happened when logging on both as the Administrator and as a Limited user. Well, I have done multiple complete scans, both as the Administrator and as a Limited user, using the McAfee AOL Safety and Security Center that all report nothing found. This is the same brand of software that says it has found a suspect file.

The only thing I have ever found that may be in regard to this problem is when I run Spybot – Search & Destroy while logged on as a Limited user. It has never found this problem when I run it as the Administrator. What I find is shown below.

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“Microsoft.Windows.Security.InternetExplorer

Settings
HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1493012600-3279099020-2455585798-1007\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_LOCALMACHINE_ LOCKDOWN\iexplore.exel=W=1

Registry Change”

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I use Spybot to correct the “problem,” but the same problem keeps returning. Spybot only finds this while I’m logged in as a Limited user, not as the administrator. Spybot says it will remove the entry, but I guess that it can’t be permanently removed because I’m logged on as a Limited user at the time. Possibly, if I can ever get Spybot to find the problem while I’m logged on as the Administrator, it will permanently remove it?

Does McAfee consider the newest version of IE a problem? ( no joke intended)
I realize that the problem found by Spybot may be unrelated to whatever the McAfee active shield is warning about, but I don’t know in what other direction to look.

I have tried doing several different system restores, but because of the order in which I did the updates, I can’t undo the IE upgrade without the entire AOL Safety and Security Center being disabled. It’s files are listed among those with a name change during the system restore. So I undo the system restore because I’m not going to go online without a software firewall operating. I guess I could try to rename all the McAfee files, and hope it all works normally afterwards.

I don’t see any provision in the Microsoft Windows update website to cause a re-download of a program that it considers to be properly installed and updated on one’s computer.

The only other thing that seems to have changed is that the little yellow “Intel Modem Event Monitor” icon now appears on the taskbar, and I don’t remember that always being there before. I use DSL anyway, so I just unplugged the phone line from my computer.

I do see now that in AOL Notifications that it found and blocked “Mirar B”. (I believe that’s what it said, but the notification is gone now.) However, this was after I had started having the above mentioned problems.

Thank you for any help you can offer.
pokerswami