I'm not completely sure if I follow your problem, but here is what we do. The first time we install McAfee on any NT account, we select the SYSTEM account to use with McAfee. Then all future upgrades are performed without a hitch and regardless of how the end-user is logged in to NT. We also use the auto-upgrade and auto-update features of McAfee and those seem to work fine as well.

I hope this helps .