WebScanX.exe
(McAfee)
McAfees Web and ActiveX Scanner. WebScanX was originally available as a separate product from McAfees antivirus products, but with web use now prevalent everywhere, it is nowadays integrated with all their antivirus products. The WEBSCANX task resides in the background and scans your Internet downloads for viruses; it also provides you with e-mail protection by scanning e-mail attachments, and, finally, it also watches out for malicious code in the Java and ActiveX applets on the web pages you access.
Recommendation :
In theory this task is essential for comprehensive protection of your PC using McAfee products, and we would normally suggest to leave it alone. However, at the time of writing, 2-Jan-2003, security holes, and medium to dramatic negative performance effects when browsing the web, were found in WEBSCANX between June 2002 and now, and McAfee was notified by various users, particularly, in our experience, AOL users who had at times intractable problems when WEBSCANX was running. Some McAfee/Network Associates answers to users actually suggested to disable WEBSCANX to alleviate the slowness problems. Now in 2003 McAfee may have produced some fixes, so ensure that all your McAfee products are fully updated with program updates as well as virus definitions updates. If that does not solve the problem, disable WEBSCANX with Starter the vast majority of websites are safe; simply remember to manually virus scan every file you download, and be careful with email attachments.