Another Norton horror story?

[news.rcn.com]

I have been using NAV for a few years moderately successfully. I also use
multi_av relatively often to check that I haven't actually caught anything

Recently I found that I could not update NAV (I didn't try manually) which
came with Systemworks so I bought and installed NIS (despite having a
hardware firewall in my WiFi router). I couldn't seem to manage to install
NAV without all the rest of NIS.

It seems a resource hog (my system has slowed to a crawl although I can't
figure out how to establish that NIS is causing this: My hard drives are
getting a bit filled up. But I DO have a fixed size XP swap file on a D
drive on this notebook) but it did actually install NAV and dumps a lot of
spam into its spam folder AND doesn't put anything which isn't spam into
that folder. Slightly worryingly, it seems to have rendered my Outlook spam
filters less effective but I am not sure how or why. And it does put normal
email into various irrelevant folders with a spam marking. This seems to be
one lousy program. And NAV is constantly turning itself off, causing an
annoying security warning.

But recently I started getting ccapp.exe error messages which Microsoft's
error detection told me were Symantec error messages which MS knows about
but for which Symantec hasn't got a patch.

Then I discovered that rather than have outlook check my email every (say)
20 seconds, I can suddenly only access my email by rebooting my computer.
Otherwise it just gives me a plethora of error messages, mostly involving
authentication. So assuming there was a problem with my ISP, I called them
and they told me that some recent patch in NIS was suddenly causing this to
happen on lots of their customer's computer's email connection. When I
tried turning off Internet Security (I haven't the vaguest idea which aspect
of NIS is causing all the problems), it also causes that annoying security
warning.

Does anyone know how to cure this Outlook problem which SEEMS to be caused
by this recent NIS patch?

Symantec of course won't support their product although to be fair they have
offered me a refund on it.

(If anyone wants a further laugh on this, I might add that I will probably
have to go the refund route as the program errors on ccapp etc necessitated
such uninstalling and reinstalling of NIS that Symantec wont let me activate
the product any more!! Someone shooting themselves in the foot just to see
how it feels?)

 

[Poster 60]

Symantec of course won't support their product although to be fair they have
offered me a refund on it.

Take the refund and get NOD32. Don't waste your time
trying to fix a new product. I've been that route and now have
absolutely NO tolerance toward *any* program that doesn't work on the
first go.
Symantec obviously didn't do their "homework". Get rid of it.

 

[news.rcn.com]

What is worse is that without any support from Symantec or patch, ccapp.exe
keeps crashing and stopping NAV from working. This is of course worrying
and brings up security warnings every few seconds, stopping you from working
on whatever you are doing and making you have to save and close all
applications (all the while, having to click on the security warnings every
few seconds) and reboot your computer to start the whole cycle all over
again!

Oh and in case anyone wants to buy this program, did I mention that every so
often it stops email transmissions and newsgroup postings all by itself for
no apparent reason

"> Take the refund and get NOD32. Don't waste your time

 

[Ian Kenefick]

Does anyone know how to cure this Outlook problem which SEEMS to be caused
by this recent NIS patch?

When in doubt take it out. That's what I say. In a nutshell DNR (Delete
and reinstall) Norton Internet Security. Use this tool to perform a
proper uninstall
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/linked_files/tsgen/SymNRT.exe

A clean install might solve the problem. I don't recommend Symantec's
security suites. Next time perhaps you could consider the alternatives.

 

[news.rcn.com]

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/linked_files/tsgen/SymNRT.exe

I wonder if it will cure the problem whereby it has been uninstalled (using
its own utility) and reinstalled so many times that Symantec wont activate
it

 

[Ian Kenefick]

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/linked_files/tsgen/SymNRT.exe

I wonder if it will cure the problem whereby it has been uninstalled (using
its own utility) and reinstalled so many times that Symantec wont activate
it

Since this is a server side issue (on symantecs side) I would think not
although I cannot be sure. I've had this problem only with Windows XP. I
call Microsoft and they just issue a new code for my copy of windows and
I can activate again. Perhaps Symantec have this? Microsoft are very
quick to deal with activation issues. In all cases for me I spoke with
an agent and activated Windows in under 5 mins of making the call. I
hope symantec is the same, but I wouldn't hold my breath

 

[K2NNJ]

Take a look at McAfee. It got very high ratings in testing.

 

[Todd H.]

Take a look at McAfee. It got very high ratings in testing.

I've seen documented issues and have had actual experiences with
McAfee not playing will with Mozilla Thunderbird mail
client--monumentally slow scanning large inboxes.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Antivirus_software#List_of_compatible_and_incompatible_antivirus_programs

 

[Ian Kenefick]

I've seen documented issues and have had actual experiences with
McAfee not playing will with Mozilla Thunderbird mail
client--monumentally slow scanning large inboxes.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Antivirus_software#List_of_compatible_and_incompatible_antivirus_programs

Interesting. Thanks for the link Todd.

 

[Art]

Interesting. Thanks for the link Todd.

Up closer to the top of that page is what amounts to suggestions for
protecting T-bird and Moz from some av scanners. Whatta ridiculous
state of affairs!

The article implicitly plays along with the idea that scanning email
is of some value when T-bird or Moz is used when all a user has to do
is delete all unsolicited attackments. Unfortunately, simple safe
hex advice is not given, and the author implicitly conspires with the
av vendors promotion of the far less safe practice of scanning
email realtime instead.

T-bird and Moz allow the user to Save attackments to a test folder
where they can be scanned after a few days waiting period for av
vendors to get detection if the attackment is new malware. That's
the safest way to handle scanning of attachments users believe might
be ok.

Art
http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[news.rcn.com]

I

hope Symantec is the same, but I wouldn't hold my breath

Apparently the whole problem with Symantec and the reason they have been
losing ground to all their competitors over the last few years is precisely
because they wont support their products any more. You simply can't call
them. Apparently when their products worked, this wasn't the case but when
all of those utilities started having to be deleted from their packaged
products because they simply didn't work, irate customers started having to
be prevented from harassing the company asking why they had paid for
products that didn't work or upgrades that only removed supposedly useful
utilities. Now this isolation is so bad that you cant even report a virus
problem to them and I am assured that their virus protection does actually
work: This is possibly because those irate but loyal customers are starting
to ask why NAV etc uses such greater resources than their competitors

What is baffling is how their share price hasn't been affected by all of
this. They must have an amazing PR department which can cover up for all of
this. (Look at their site, where they trumpet their SELF-award-winning
support for evidence that they have withdrawn it: PR can only go so far. At
some stage you have to start awarding yourself awards and shouting about it
very loudly indeed to cover up all this. Otherwise the computer magazines
will notice). Or they simply dont care about consumers and prefer to deal
with large businesses which they WILL support. I'll bet if you can find a
number for them, you will be asked immediately if you are an Enterprise User
or something (or whether you have bought your product FROM THEM in the last
ten minutes) before they decide whether to bother assisting you.

QUESTION: Is the age of the packaged utilities program (which works) dead?
Has no one been able to improve on Microsoft's built-in utilities?

 

[optikl]

I

Apparently the whole problem with Symantec and the reason they have been
losing ground to all their competitors over the last few years is precisely
because they wont support their products any more. You simply can't call
them. Apparently when their products worked, this wasn't the case but when
all of those utilities started having to be deleted from their packaged
products because they simply didn't work, irate customers started having to
be prevented from harassing the company asking why they had paid for
products that didn't work or upgrades that only removed supposedly useful
utilities. Now this isolation is so bad that you cant even report a virus
problem to them and I am assured that their virus protection does actually
work: This is possibly because those irate but loyal customers are starting
to ask why NAV etc uses such greater resources than their competitors

What is baffling is how their share price hasn't been affected by all of
this. They must have an amazing PR department which can cover up for all of
this. (Look at their site, where they trumpet their SELF-award-winning
support for evidence that they have withdrawn it: PR can only go so far. At
some stage you have to start awarding yourself awards and shouting about it
very loudly indeed to cover up all this. Otherwise the computer magazines
will notice). Or they simply dont care about consumers and prefer to deal
with large businesses which they WILL support. I'll bet if you can find a
number for them, you will be asked immediately if you are an Enterprise User
or something (or whether you have bought your product FROM THEM in the last
ten minutes) before they decide whether to bother assisting you.

QUESTION: Is the age of the packaged utilities program (which works) dead?
Has no one been able to improve on Microsoft's built-in utilities?

Are you asking about utility "suites"? There are 3rd party stand-alone
utility programs that run circles around Microsoft's built in stuff.

 

[* * Chas]

I

Apparently the whole problem with Symantec and the reason they have been
losing ground to all their competitors over the last few years is precisely
because they wont support their products any more. You simply can't call
them. Apparently when their products worked, this wasn't the case but when
all of those utilities started having to be deleted from their packaged
products because they simply didn't work, irate customers started having to
be prevented from harassing the company asking why they had paid for
products that didn't work or upgrades that only removed supposedly useful
utilities. Now this isolation is so bad that you cant even report a virus
problem to them and I am assured that their virus protection does actually
work: This is possibly because those irate but loyal customers are starting
to ask why NAV etc uses such greater resources than their competitors

What is baffling is how their share price hasn't been affected by all of
this. They must have an amazing PR department which can cover up for all of
this. (Look at their site, where they trumpet their SELF-award-winning
support for evidence that they have withdrawn it: PR can only go so far. At
some stage you have to start awarding yourself awards and shouting about it
very loudly indeed to cover up all this. Otherwise the computer magazines
will notice). Or they simply dont care about consumers and prefer to deal
with large businesses which they WILL support. I'll bet if you can find a
number for them, you will be asked immediately if you are an Enterprise User
or something (or whether you have bought your product FROM THEM in the last
ten minutes) before they decide whether to bother assisting you.

<snip>

Most magazine AV reviews that I've read over the years were written by
complete flacks who liked one particular interface over another and that
was the basis of their recommendations rather than performance!

The OP should cleanse their system of Symantec and choose some of the
smaller, more efficient solutions offered in this NG.

Chas.

 

[* * Chas]

Take the refund and get NOD32. Don't waste your time
trying to fix a new product. I've been that route and now have
absolutely NO tolerance toward *any* program that doesn't work on the
first go.
Symantec obviously didn't do their "homework". Get rid of it.

I second your suggestion. I have NOD32 on 5 systems and it works great.
I also use F-Prot as a backup on demand scanner and on my infrequently
used PCs.

Chas.

 

[news.rcn.com]

I am OP and have come to accept (long ago) that Symantec must be purged: If
I hadn't, they have convinced me of this by telling me they wont activate a
suite I had to keep reinstalling because their programs keep crashing.

I wouldn't use the MS programs but have to confess that I kinda liked the
SystemWorks concept of something that pretended to be better than Scandisk
(and it probably was back in the Windows 3.1 days when Microsoft adopted
Norton's elderly applications) and mend whatever was broken with your
Windows installation. Is there a similar package out there? Either with or
without anti-virus?

 

[badgolferman]

I am OP and have come to accept (long ago) that Symantec must be
purged:

I am not sure I agree with this. Symantec (not Norton) Antivirus and
Norton Ghost are good products.

 

[news.rcn.com]

The antivirus product seems to do its job reasonably well and it seems well
updated although it also seems to use too much in the way of resources: As
to the Ghost product, I have used it with success in the past but it is
incredibly clunky and I NEVER managed to back anything up to any place other
than onto the computer from which I was trying to back up (this isn't as
stupid as it seems, - subsequently you can put the file it creates on
another drive). So you cant use it easily in practice when you have filled
up more than 50% of the drive

But if NAV is going to crash ccapp.exe every so often and you have to
restart the whole computer every so often and even Microsoft has cottoned on
to the fact that Symantec can't assist in stopping this from happening,
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/response.aspx?SGD=011421c2-38a4-4682-88bf-a2b0e1ff94ea&SID=1508
(try clicking the link to get spun around in circles being told nothing
about this problem by Symantec)
what use is it?

Any company which has to go to the lengths Symantec does to prevent users
from contacting tech support has to be at least suspect??