McAfee VirusScan is not retaining settings that are specified in the client for more than roughly five minutes, for example, I have enabled prevent mass mailing worm but after a short time has passed and the interface is reopened, the settings are unchecked. The client does obtain updates and configuration parameters from ePO, does that mean that setting specified in the clients will not remain permanent.
Is there a way to determine the policy setting via command line or some other means on the client to determine if ePO is pushing out a requirement not to retain settings?
If your client is managed by ePO and you want to change its policy, you need to break policy inheritance for that computer on the ePO server and define a new custom policy for it, also on the server. The default policy enforcement interval for ePO managed clients is 5 minutes, which would explain why your manually updated settings are being overwritten in 5 minute intervals.