How To Fix Slow McAfee Startup?

I recently uninstalled my Norton scanning software and installed McAfee Total Protection. Since this installation my system startup performance has dropped into the toilet. With Norton, I was able to use the Internet almost immediately. With McAfee, it takes a full 2 to 3 minutes after my desktop icons appear before the McAfee startup splash screen appears. And it is only after the McAfee splash screen that my Internet access becomes available. During this time the hard drive is being hit hard, so I’m assuming that McAfee is doing some sort of startup scan and won’t activate my Internet until it is finished.

I have spent 2 very long chat sessions with McAfee tech support trying to resolve this problem. Both had different suggestions. The first one had me change the "Specify the types of files to scan" from the default "All Files" to "Program Files and Documents Only". That made absolutely no difference in the system startup time. The 2nd tech had me go through and clean up all temp files in various places on the hard drive but that had no effect either.

I really don’t want to toss out this 3 user version of McAfee that I purchased, but neither do I like having to sit staring at the screen for 2-3 minutes waiting to use the Internet after system startup. I keep thinking that there must be some setting that I can choose to eliminate this apparent startup scan, but I certainly can’t find it if there is one.

Is this behavior normal? Is McAfee just that much slower on startup than Norton? Any suggestions?

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