McAfee Upgrade Disrupts Lotus Notes

Users of IBM Lotus Notes are being advised to delay upgrading to the latest version of McAfee's VirusScan, as the patch apparently causes Lotus Notes to lock people out of their mailboxes. McAfee is currently working on a fix.

The issue has been confirmed to occur on computers with VirusScan Enterprise 8.5i and Lotus Notes installed. According to those affected, the only way to fix the issue in some cases is to completely reinstall the program.

The issue according to both companies first appears an hour or two after Lotus is restarted following the installation of the McAfee upgrade. When opening or deleting a message, the error "You are not authorized to perform that operation" appears.

IBM claims a restart fixes the problem temporarily -- although the error reappears in an hour or two -- but the support document seems to dispute reports that it is serious enough to necessitate a reinstall.

"The only known workaround is to completely disable the anti-virus software or to change the Notes Scanner settings to disable: 'Scan all server databases' and 'Scan server mailboxes,"' IBM said in an advisory describing the issue.

Of course, disabling anti-virus software may place computers at risk for infection from malware. However, McAfee has no definitive solution available at this time.