Open BUP File

BUP as McAfee Quarantine File

This article is going to cover the topic of  BUP files used with McAfee antivirus. A BUP file, for this application, is a quarantined file and saves a backup copy of a file that was moved from another location on the computer because a virus or other malware was detected.
In other words, it is a way of protecting the original file that was detected as being the target of a virus.

The way it works is when it comes to a McAfee virus scan, through a file that may be malware, McAfee adds the BUP file extension to the original file name, in this way, it indicates that the file is questionable and that it may contain malware.

For example, if the antivirus determines that the file "whatever.txt" could contain malware, then it renames the file "whatever.txt.bup." and furthermore, it moves you to the quarantine area for further examination.

These quarantined files can be located in

 'C:\ProgramData\McAfee\VirusScan\Quarantine' or a similar path, depending on the version of Windows and the version of the antivirus.

It is possible that the 'Quarantine' directory on the local computer will grow in such a way that it is difficult to manage, and as more files are added to the quarantine, it will become heavier.

The files contained in this directory could be write-protected, so if you need to delete them permanently, you must disable 'Access Protection'.

In any case, you can restore quarantined files using the 'Quarantine Manager'. However, there may be cases where the antivirus has already deleted the file.