symantec versus microsoft

[Guest]

now i now why the conflict with the symantec software with the defenders
real-time protection is going on and not wil be solved soon :

symantec has made an official complaint to microsoft concerning the volume
manager software from veritas , see the link below....
sorry but in dutch from zdnet belgium , but maybe also available in englisch
on zdnet....

http://www.zdnet.be/news.cfm?id=56836


so a coöperation in solving the conflict between there sofware wil not be
for soon i think....

 

[Guest]

same link here in englisch....

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6074055.html

 

[Guest]

In these situations, the final consumer is who mostly loses.

Indeed, Bill Sanderson, back time, said that Microsoft is aware of the
Defender/Norton issue (but not that it intends to resolve it!).

 

[Steve Wechsler [MVP]]

now i now why the conflict with the symantec software with the defenders
Frankly, any Symantec supposed software that is intended for the typical
Home User market is rubbish and they should be sued for fraud. And, made
to pay the hours billed to said Users by Techs who have to jump through
hoops to uninstall said suppposed software.
Check out this very recent thread at CastleCops :

http://www.castlecops.com/t154154-NIS_Freaking_Out.html

Besides breaking BITS and hampering or denying Users the ability to
install Critical Updates, it adds hours onto a their bills.
Maybe some day a bright lawyer will gather the anectodal evidence and
make Symantec pay for their fraudulent, frustrating practices.

Steve Wechsler (akaMowGreen)
MVP Windows Server Systems - Microsoft Update Services
Windows - Security
===============
*-343-* FDNY
Never Forgotten
===============

 

[Anonymous Bob]

Frankly, any Symantec supposed software that is intended for the typical
Home User market is rubbish and they should be sued for fraud. And, made
to pay the hours billed to said Users by Techs who have to jump through
hoops to uninstall said suppposed software.
Check out this very recent thread at CastleCops :

http://www.castlecops.com/t154154-NIS_Freaking_Out.html

Steve,

I certainly wouldn't consider someone (frustrated8888) who has no idea what
a master browser is to be an expert.<g>

I have great respect and appreciation for all the MVP's who so selfishly
share their time and expertise. There's another Microsoft MVP in that thread
who also speaks of Symantec in a derogetory manner. Flankly, I'm a tiny
little bit put off by his/her comments and by your own. FWIW, I have used
Norton/Symantec products for many years and I haven't had an unusual number
of problems with them.

One could easily start a religous war on the topic of Symantec, but those
who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. <bEg>

Very respectfully,
Bob Vanderveen

 

[Pat Willener]

Couldn't agree more with your statement!

 

[Pat Willener]

I couldn't agree more with your statement; Symantecware is the only
malware where the victims actually pay to get infected!

 

[Steve Wechsler [MVP]]

Steve,

I certainly wouldn't consider someone (frustrated8888) who has no idea what
a master browser is to be an expert.<g>

I have great respect and appreciation for all the MVP's who so selfishly
share their time and expertise. There's another Microsoft MVP in that thread
who also speaks of Symantec in a derogetory manner. Flankly, I'm a tiny
little bit put off by his/her comments and by your own. FWIW, I have used
Norton/Symantec products for many years and I haven't had an unusual number
of problems with them.

One could easily start a religous war on the topic of Symantec, but those
who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. <bEg>

Very respectfully,
Bob Vanderveen

My opinion is based on what I and other Techs have had to go through to
uninstall any Symantec "product" for the Home. Why should someone have
to pay extra to uninstall malfunctioning software ? Why is it that the
so-called software will not uninstall properly ?

That, in addition, to breaking BITS, hindering/denying access to
Critical updates, breaking System Restore, etc., makes it something that
the Typical Home User should stay away from.

That being said, I have seen very *few* systems where no untoward
effects from Symancrap being installed is the case.
It's a much safer bet installing alternative software, of which there is
a broad selection to choose from.

As long as it works for you, consider yourself one of the "chosen ones "
BTW, I *use* to beta test for Symancrap


Steve Wechsler (akaMowGreen)
MVP Windows Server Systems - Microsoft Update Services
Windows - Security
===============
*-343-* FDNY
Never Forgotten
===============

 

[Guest]

My opinion is based on what I and other Techs have had to go through to
uninstall any Symantec "product" for the Home. Why should someone have
to pay extra to uninstall malfunctioning software ? Why is it that the
so-called software will not uninstall properly ?

That, in addition, to breaking BITS, hindering/denying access to
Critical updates, breaking System Restore, etc., makes it something that
the Typical Home User should stay away from.

That being said, I have seen very *few* systems where no untoward
effects from Symancrap being installed is the case.
It's a much safer bet installing alternative software, of which there is
a broad selection to choose from.

As long as it works for you, consider yourself one of the "chosen ones "
BTW, I *use* to beta test for Symancrap


Steve Wechsler (akaMowGreen)
MVP Windows Server Systems - Microsoft Update Services
Windows - Security
===============
*-343-* FDNY
Never Forgotten
===============

Hey Mow

Hope your well, I was just visiting and noticed your post and I fully agree.
Symantec is a waste of time. I did have Symantec 2004 and I removed it with 6
months left on the subscription and removing it caused so many problems on
the pc I decided to format and reinstall Windows rather than try fix all the
issues.

They may think its clever using an online support service on their site
where everyone you chat to hardly speaks or understands any English but the
experience I recently had with them on that online service has made me 100%
sure I would never use a Symantec product again. All I was asking them was
how to remove the Norton Protected Bin on a system that had Norton 2002 , the
user had run their removal tools when they removed Norton years ago as the
uninstaller wouldnt work for them but it left the Protected Bin behind which
had infected entries inside.

I used a batch file to search the RECYCLER folder and it couldnt see the
Norton Bin so then thought Id try Symantec which was a big mistake, The said
use the Norton Remover but it didnt work so then I went back to them and they
said use these 2 older Removers but they didnt work so went back and
explained what the problem was and how the solutions provided were failing
and asked if there is an alternative way to remove the bin and the person on
the chat disconnected me without saying anything, I tried again and they said
to use the Norton Remover and try removing Norton from the Add/Remove screen
I gave up on their nonsense and managed to delete the Norton Recycle bin
using a command prompt.

I do some research for an Antispy vendor and I scan every file at VirusTotal
as a part of the notes to get detection results, MD5 info' etc. I can
honestly say Symantec misses about 90% of the malware files I scan ( I can
provide many results where they do not detect the files for infections like
SmitFraud, Haxdoor, Wareout, Backdoor/Proxy Trojans, Rootkits etc..) , If the
infection is new then there is a very good chance Symantec will not detect it
which isnt ideal for AV protection.

To be fair to Symantec the Microsoft scanner used on VirusTotal hardly ever
detects infections either but thats another story

Regards

Andy

 

[Claudio Valderrama C.]

I have great respect and appreciation for all the MVP's who so selfishly
share their time and expertise. There's another Microsoft MVP in that thread
who also speaks of Symantec in a derogetory manner. Flankly, I'm a tiny
little bit put off by his/her comments and by your own. FWIW, I have used
Norton/Symantec products for many years and I haven't had an unusual number
of problems with them.

One could easily start a religous war on the topic of Symantec, but those
who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. <bEg>

I understand your position and I congratulate you for being one of those
individuals chosen by the Supreme Divinity to be able to run Symantec
products without problems. I assume you have uninstalled successfully them,
too.


I live in a country in South America and my experience (both personal and
helping others) is that Symantec:
- Provides resource hogs. Apparently they think the machine is for their
tools, instead of having the tools to improve the machine's performance. For
people that like their system tools, I recommend that those aren't set to
load automatically. Those shiny bars and meters want more memory than most
programs I use.
- I was lucky I was able to uninstall, but I had to waste hours digging in
the registry and file system for things that belonged to Symantec
applications. I used the command prompt and PowerDesk (now a vcom product)
to chase files hidden in special directories.
- Several years ago (7, 8, maybe more, don't remember) I purchased Winfax.
It was a source of frustration. Any update was a disaster, with Sym forums
full of people complaining against the same issues for weeks and the inept
tech support staff denying the facts. Finally I found a registry problem and
notified them, but that only showed the next bug: if you had too much free
disk space, Winfax wouldn't work. Notice at that time, the biggest disks
were below 5 GB. Most people lost their right to a 30 day refund or so while
waiting for a solution that Sym didn't care to push.
- I purchased NAV 4 or 5, don't remember. It worked. I was satisfied. I
upgraded year after year. I happened to purchase their new Norton Internet
Security product (aka NIS). Since the firewall was the creation of another
company, it worked fine in the first two versions. Wait until the third
version: it couldn't filter anymore on my machine (it was the same machine),
tech support was clueless, they always tell you to uninstall and reinstall
10 times to make you lose time while they prepare the next scapegoat, the AV
became tied to the FW (before that, I could start the FW on demand so I
could do my heavy compilations with less processes competing for HW
resources), the FW started using a main window based on MS web technology
(the same DLLs that are loaded by IE and Outlook to work with web pages) so
if you disabled several options for security in IE, NIS interface wouldn't
work, etc. I finally switched to Outpost and KAV5, used KAV for a year but
it was too resource hungry and their new 6th version wouldn't run on my
machine because (I suspect) I have some services disabled. Indeed, I
couldn't boot even. Since they didn't show interest in working with me (even
after offering my findings and any tech information they would need) I
didn't pay for the 5->6 upgrade but I changed to NOD32 and I have to say it
makes good partner with Outpost.
- I've seen people that are unable to install any AV or FW after their
uninstall NIS or NAV. I've seen people that turn the antispam feature off
because it's overjealous but it continues running because it still blocks
and/or marks some emails, etc.
- I've seen people that can't get rid of infected files until they disabled
Sym products. And when you submit a suspicious file to Sym, thinking a
technician will have a look as they say in some marketing offering, it's
simply analyzed automatically by their on-site NAV running the newest
signature files.
- In the old times, you could go to their forums and see all threads you
wanted. You could see whether others had the same issues as you. Last time I
visited their support site, I couldn't find any forum therefore I had to
submit a request that was answered directly by some technician that -as
expected- didn't provide any useful insight into the problem. Probably their
old public web-based forums gave them bad publicity as any customer could
see there were hundreds of frustrated people "in the same deep water or mud
as you".

All this doesn't mean I have any interest in defending MS. I'm simply
sharing my problems with Sym as a demonstration that criticism against that
company is not gratuitous insult.

I'm sorry Sym acquired PowerQuest and its star products PartitionMagic and
DriveCopy. I'm sure the support quality dropped immediately and DriveCopy
disappeared in favor of Ghost. It makes me remember when NAI acquired
Cybermedia. BTW, it seems that NAI no longer exists.

C.

 

[Anonymous Bob]

I understand your position and I congratulate you for being one of those
individuals chosen by the Supreme Divinity to be able to run Symantec
products without problems. I assume you have uninstalled successfully them,
too.

<snip>

Some years ago I had some serious problems and had to find and run their
uninstaller. I still had to scour the registry manually, so I do understand
the anti-Symantec point of view. Following that experience I run other AV's
for a couple of years but they all had their problems as well.

I'm currently running NAV 2005 on 2K Pro and NAV 2006 on XP Pro. I've had no
problems with either. Still I would only recommend those 2 products and none
other.

NAV is still a popular program as shown in the AV poll at dslreports:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15690127~viewpoll=1

Bob Vanderveen