Auto-Protect Error

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Recently I upgraded to Norton SystemWorks 2004. What an unexpected disaster! I overcame the conflict with my video driver and vanished A: drive but still cannot get the AntiVirus Auto-Protect feature to work. Whenever I click “Enable” I get “Norton AntiVirus has encountered an internal program error. (4002,517)” The error message directs you to Norton’s web site where it walks you through possible solutions. I have gone through all of them and uninstalled and reinstalled the program four or five times. Nothing works.

I finally called Dell (I have a Precision 330 workstation running Windows 2000) and the less than desirable conclusion their tech support came to was that I should back everything up and re-install windows. Their rationale was that it would take less time to do that than to figure out the actual software cause and fix. They might be right but I also have an inquiring mind that wants to know why this happened.

After mulling things over it occurred to me that the trojan (Trojan.ByteVerify) that Norton AV found recently may have something to do with this problem. At first I thought it must have gotten in while I was installing software after SysWorks hosed my video driver, when I had AV and ZoneAlarm both disabled during the installation process. But now after searching the web and seeing all the postings in numerous languages that all report the same problem with Auto-Protect just showing up mysteriously, I’m thinking that this might be a trojan that Norton didn’t catch until after it was already established on a lot of computers (I get the automatic updates as soon as they are released). And once on the computer, I expect the trojan tweaks registry settings so that Norton can’t function properly. Last week when I did a full system scan (manual scanning still functions) Norton did find this trojan but I’m not convinced that it’s gone… or if it is, I still have damage to repair and I don’t know where to start.

Does anyone have knowledge of how Trojan.ByteVerify works and would it likely be the reason that I’m not able to get Auto-Protect to work?

Any help with this is greatly appreciated!
Virginia

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I have not heard of this one, and I don’t use the Symantec product. So these comments are more general than specific.

If you suspect that the clean-up was incomplete, you can use the ActiveX-based HouseCall scanner to get a second opinion. (Because antivirus vendors have not standardized the names of various malware, Trend Micro may detect this trojan as JAVA_BYTEVER.A. Hard to say whether that’s the same one or not.)

After you’re confident that the system is clean, you might uninstall SystemWorks, reboot, then reinstall SystemWorks. Hopefully then any problems will have been resolved.

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Thanks for the ideas. I tried to use HouseCall but ran into an error on their web site. After poking around elsewhere on the web I downloaded a free trial version of TDS3 and used it to do an in-depth scan of my system. It appears that Norton already got rid of the infection. I then followed your suggestion and uninstalled/reinstalled System Works, rebooting between each activity, but alas I still have the same problem (I also uninstalled TDS3 first just in case Norton had a problem with it). Maybe the Dell tech was right. Ugh!

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Before you go ahead with drastic steps like reformatting and reinstalling,
have you tried downloading, installing, updating and running
Ad-Aware SE Personal
and
Spybot – Search & Destroy,
all easily Googled for?

It’s worth a try, even though it doesn’t seem to be necessarily in their area of expertise…

John

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John, Thanks for the software suggestions. First I uninstalled SystemWorks, next I loaded and ran Ad-Aware SE Personal and then Spybot S&D, and finally, I reinstalled SW2004. While it was definitely worthwhile to clean my system and add another layer of security, it didn’t solve the Auto-Protect problem. But it was worth a try and it will be very useful to have these programs loaded going forward.

Thanks for taking the time to post these suggestions.
Virginia

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After uninstalling Norton’s, one needs to go into Windows Explorer and remove all Symantec and Nortons folder and contents. Reboot and then reinstall it. The problem was in one of the files that was left on the hard drive and is still there. This step is one a LOT of people forget or do not do, As for the “registry”, I have not needed to clean it out on any machine that I have had this problem with.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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DaveA, thanks for the useful tip. The reason we end-users don’t delete the left-behind files is because Symantec doesn’t mention it in their instructions. I guess my failing is that I follow their instructions to the letter. It has gotten me into trouble before.

If the Auto-Protect problem isn’t in the registry I must have missed a file somewhere because the problem is still here. First I uninstalled SW2004 via Control Panel as usual. Then I used the instructions from Symantec’s web site on “Removing Norton SystemWorks 2004 in Windows XP/2000 after Add/Remove Programs does not work” to locate the leftover folders and files. I booted up in Safe Mode to remove these items. After I finished that I rebooted again and then re-installed SW2004 but at the end of the installation I still got the same error message.

Thank you and everyone else who has attempted to help me sort this out. Tomorrow I’m going to have a (paid, I’m sure) conversation with Symantec. If I learn the fix from them without having to reinstall my entire system, I will post the information here.

Virginia

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DaveA, thanks for the useful tip. The reason we end-users don’t delete the left-behind files is because Symantec doesn’t mention it in their instructions. I guess my failing is that I follow their instructions to the letter. It has gotten me into trouble before.

If the Auto-Protect problem isn’t in the registry I must have missed a file somewhere because the problem is still here. First I uninstalled SW2004 via Control Panel as usual. Then I used the instructions from Symantec’s web site on “Removing Norton SystemWorks 2004 in Windows XP/2000 after Add/Remove Programs does not work” to locate the leftover folders and files. I booted up in Safe Mode to remove these items. After I finished that I rebooted again and then re-installed SW2004 but at the end of the installation I still got the same error message.

Thank you and everyone else who has attempted to help me sort this out. Tomorrow I’m going to have a (paid, I’m sure) conversation with Symantec. If I learn the fix from them without having to reinstall my entire system, I will post the information here.

Virginia

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After uninstalling Norton’s, one needs to go into Windows Explorer and remove all Symantec and Nortons folder and contents. Reboot and then reinstall it. The problem was in one of the files that was left on the hard drive and is still there. This step is one a LOT of people forget or do not do, As for the “registry”, I have not needed to clean it out on any machine that I have had this problem with.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Virginia

Wow! You’re not a Manager, are you? In my experience only the very highest up are allowed to say the magic phrase “going forward”!!!

Hope the Symantec techies come up trumps!

John

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Virginia

Wow! You’re not a Manager, are you? In my experience only the very highest up are allowed to say the magic phrase “going forward”!!!

Hope the Symantec techies come up trumps!

John

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John, Thanks for the software suggestions. First I uninstalled SystemWorks, next I loaded and ran Ad-Aware SE Personal and then Spybot S&D, and finally, I reinstalled SW2004. While it was definitely worthwhile to clean my system and add another layer of security, it didn’t solve the Auto-Protect problem. But it was worth a try and it will be very useful to have these programs loaded going forward.

Thanks for taking the time to post these suggestions.
Virginia

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Before you go ahead with drastic steps like reformatting and reinstalling,
have you tried downloading, installing, updating and running
Ad-Aware SE Personal
and
Spybot – Search & Destroy,
all easily Googled for?

It’s worth a try, even though it doesn’t seem to be necessarily in their area of expertise…

John

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(Edited by ilona53 on 20-Aug-04 16:38. added the quote)

Do you have the SW2004 manual? If you do, have you checked pages 295-296?
“Auto-Protect does not load when I start my computer” :
If the NAV A-P icon doesn’t appear in the systray, A-P is not loaded….3 likely reasons:
1. you may have started in safe mode…Windows restarts in safe mode if the previous shutdown didn’t complete successfully.
2. NAV may not be configured to start A-P automatically
3. NAV may not be configured to show the A-P icon in the tray.
I looked at the Symantec KBase re (4002,519)…you checked that each and every item circled in the screenshots were enabled? You followed each suggestion as listed there?
Other than uninstalling SW2004 and going into the Registry to find anything with ‘Symantec’ ‘Norton’, etc…deleting…rebooting…and then re-installing SW2004…I don’t know what else to tell you.
I upgraded from SW2002 to SW2004…boy! – too many problems, ran slow , bloated, etc. I did a complete uninstall of all Norton 2004 products and went back to 2002! I still have the manuals for both SW2004 & Firewall2004 (and the disks, of course)…collecting dust .
If nothing from uninstall/re-install works, perhaps something else is causing this…are you sure you removed everything re the old SW version???
“] just took 2004 off my computer and went back to Norton System Works 2002 and all updates. Norton Anti Virus 2004 might enable Auto Protect at start up it might not(IN Most Cases it would Not). At times I had to re-boot 2 or 3 times to get Auto protect to function properly. Yes it was checked in options. I have never had this problem with the 2002 version. “..this is a quote from a different Forum website that MIGHT give you a clue as to your problem or maybe not

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Lonnie, Thanks for all the thoughts and checks. I do have the SystemWorks 2004 manual and checked the pages you referenced. In my case the Auto-Protect icon DOES appear in the System Tray, it’s just that it’s permanently wearing a red X which means it’s not running. Also, the error I get when I try to activate Auto-Protect is slightly different than the one you posted [mine is 4002,517 rather than 4002,519] but I looked at the ‘519’ web site just in case and it says virtually the same thing. Yes, to all the double-checks: I made sure all the same things were selected as shown in the screen shots, I drilled down into each “if this, then that” section of Symantec’s web pages and I did everything!!! they suggested to the letter… in fact I’ve gone through it several times just to be sure I didn’t somehow miss something.

If I were to try deleting everything ‘Norton’ out of the Registry I would also assume that I would end up wiping my hard drive and reinstalling everything because I’m pretty sure I would screw up something major. However, your suggestion of reverting to SW2002 is a possibility I hadn’t considered. It may be more reasonable for the short term than my few remaining options. The reason I upgraded in the first place, though, was because I started seeing things about some of the newest virus definitions not running on the 2002 engine.

Thanks again for taking the time to help. It’s really great that there are so many people willing to lend a hand!

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Well, I’m happy to be back using the 2002 versions of both SW & Firewall…fits like an ‘old shoe’. I just wish you had better luck w/2004. Why not just go back to 2002?

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Well, I’m happy to be back using the 2002 versions of both SW & Firewall…fits like an ‘old shoe’. I just wish you had better luck w/2004. Why not just go back to 2002?

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Lonnie, Thanks for all the thoughts and checks. I do have the SystemWorks 2004 manual and checked the pages you referenced. In my case the Auto-Protect icon DOES appear in the System Tray, it’s just that it’s permanently wearing a red X which means it’s not running. Also, the error I get when I try to activate Auto-Protect is slightly different than the one you posted [mine is 4002,517 rather than 4002,519] but I looked at the ‘519’ web site just in case and it says virtually the same thing. Yes, to all the double-checks: I made sure all the same things were selected as shown in the screen shots, I drilled down into each “if this, then that” section of Symantec’s web pages and I did everything!!! they suggested to the letter… in fact I’ve gone through it several times just to be sure I didn’t somehow miss something.

If I were to try deleting everything ‘Norton’ out of the Registry I would also assume that I would end up wiping my hard drive and reinstalling everything because I’m pretty sure I would screw up something major. However, your suggestion of reverting to SW2002 is a possibility I hadn’t considered. It may be more reasonable for the short term than my few remaining options. The reason I upgraded in the first place, though, was because I started seeing things about some of the newest virus definitions not running on the 2002 engine.

Thanks again for taking the time to help. It’s really great that there are so many people willing to lend a hand!

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Thanks for the ideas. I tried to use HouseCall but ran into an error on their web site. After poking around elsewhere on the web I downloaded a free trial version of TDS3 and used it to do an in-depth scan of my system. It appears that Norton already got rid of the infection. I then followed your suggestion and uninstalled/reinstalled System Works, rebooting between each activity, but alas I still have the same problem (I also uninstalled TDS3 first just in case Norton had a problem with it). Maybe the Dell tech was right. Ugh!

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I have not heard of this one, and I don’t use the Symantec product. So these comments are more general than specific.

If you suspect that the clean-up was incomplete, you can use the ActiveX-based HouseCall scanner to get a second opinion. (Because antivirus vendors have not standardized the names of various malware, Trend Micro may detect this trojan as JAVA_BYTEVER.A. Hard to say whether that’s the same one or not.)

After you’re confident that the system is clean, you might uninstall SystemWorks, reboot, then reinstall SystemWorks. Hopefully then any problems will have been resolved.

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Virginia,
Have you checked Symantec’s explanation of that virus and followed their instuctions for removal exactly? See itHERE

They also refer you to MS Security Bulletin MS03-011
for HOW it infects a system.

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Thanks Bob for the info you provided. I guess I can’t blame the infection on Symantec. After reading this info on the trojan it does look like the infection probably occurred while I had NAV and ZoneAlarm shut down. From the descriptions, the infection may not have actually activated since I didn’t observe any of the described symptoms. At least it’s gone now as far as I can tell (or as far as either NAV or TDS3 can tell). I guess the infection and the AutoProtect problems I’m having may just be coincidental rather than causal.

Hopefully as I slog through the MS Security Bulletin and linked articles I will find some little kernel of useful information. None of Symantec’s website suggestions helped the AutoProtect issue. I even looked into the possibility that this might be a result of leftovers from SystemWorks 2002, even though the SW2004 manual specifically says you don’t need to uninstall SW2002 before installing SW2004. Unfortunately Symantec’s Rnav2003 removal tool doesn’t work if AntiVirus was installed as part of SystemWorks, and the web site does not even provide manual removal instructions for the combination of SystemWorks 2002 and Windows 2000… not that I’m at all keen on editing the Registry anyway. But it might be a shade better than reinstalling the large number of applications I have on this machine — that I actually use.

Any other ideas before I go jump off a cliff?

Thanks again,
Virginia

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Did you read this Symantec KB article? I’m posting the printed version as a link.
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.n…1113342606?Open%5B/url%5D

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Did you read this Symantec KB article? I’m posting the printed version as a link.
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.n…1113342606?Open%5B/url%5D

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> Any other ideas before I go jump off a cliff?

Turn off Norton Antivirus and use another antivirus product? Seems less likely to cause severe injuries.

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> Any other ideas before I go jump off a cliff?

Turn off Norton Antivirus and use another antivirus product? Seems less likely to cause severe injuries.

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Virginia,
Don’t jump !! Don’t jump!!
—————————————-
I recall something similar that had to do with auto protect that I had a while back. I would go into AV options and check auto protect, exit, then look again and it was UN checked again. I ended up removing NSW completely, using the steps outlined in Removal
Then reinstalling again and all was fine and dandy again. There was hidden bonus in doing this. I don’t want to reveal it here but you will see it if you follow the instructions.

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Virginia,
Don’t jump !! Don’t jump!!
—————————————-
I recall something similar that had to do with auto protect that I had a while back. I would go into AV options and check auto protect, exit, then look again and it was UN checked again. I ended up removing NSW completely, using the steps outlined in Removal
Then reinstalling again and all was fine and dandy again. There was hidden bonus in doing this. I don’t want to reveal it here but you will see it if you follow the instructions.

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Thanks Bob for the info you provided. I guess I can’t blame the infection on Symantec. After reading this info on the trojan it does look like the infection probably occurred while I had NAV and ZoneAlarm shut down. From the descriptions, the infection may not have actually activated since I didn’t observe any of the described symptoms. At least it’s gone now as far as I can tell (or as far as either NAV or TDS3 can tell). I guess the infection and the AutoProtect problems I’m having may just be coincidental rather than causal.

Hopefully as I slog through the MS Security Bulletin and linked articles I will find some little kernel of useful information. None of Symantec’s website suggestions helped the AutoProtect issue. I even looked into the possibility that this might be a result of leftovers from SystemWorks 2002, even though the SW2004 manual specifically says you don’t need to uninstall SW2002 before installing SW2004. Unfortunately Symantec’s Rnav2003 removal tool doesn’t work if AntiVirus was installed as part of SystemWorks, and the web site does not even provide manual removal instructions for the combination of SystemWorks 2002 and Windows 2000… not that I’m at all keen on editing the Registry anyway. But it might be a shade better than reinstalling the large number of applications I have on this machine — that I actually use.

Any other ideas before I go jump off a cliff?

Thanks again,
Virginia

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Virginia,
Have you checked Symantec’s explanation of that virus and followed their instuctions for removal exactly? See itHERE

They also refer you to MS Security Bulletin MS03-011
for HOW it infects a system.

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Here is an update on this unfortunate saga. Long story short, nothing worked to get rid of the Auto-Protect error and, thanks to Symantec tech support, if I didn’t have a second hard drive I’d be paying someone to retrieve data off of my C: drive right now. Here’s how it played out…

After trying all of the suggestions posted here, I finally called Symantec. Eventually they were convinced that this was a no-charge for support problem. One thing that will be important to anyone else who runs into the 2004,517 error is that before you call Symantec you have to determine that some other service isn’t conflicting with Norton on startup. The instructions are on the Symantec web page for dealing with Error 2004,517. One of the expandable links says “for Windows XP Only” – except Symantec expects you to check the same things if you’re running Windows 2000 even though they don’t say so. If you’re running Windows 2000 may have to download the msconfig utility to your desktop.

After the initial support conversation, I was emailed a detailed set of instructions for uninstalling all Symantec products, editing the registry, and cleaning out all left over Symantec/Norton files and folders. When I finally re-installed SystemWorks I got the same error.

I got another support rep on the phone and we went through every conceivable scenario. I was on the phone for 3 1/2 hours but alas, the whole thing ended when the tech support guy suggested that I try uninstalling Roxio CD Creator (someone else had reported some sort of minor conflict with it). After the uninstall process I rebooted my computer and got the blue screen of death. At that point the Symantec support rep told me I was on my own. My computer was so jacked up that I couldn’t even get my CD drive to read my recovery disk. Fortunately I also have a laptop computer and a Dell support person helped me copy boot files to floppies and we then used those to install Windows on my second hard drive. I’ve been able to retrieve and back up all my data from the C: drive that way but still have to reformat the C: drive and reload windows and all the programs and all the backed up data. What a @#$&% MESS!

Symantec didn’t have much to say except “gee, we’re really sorry this happened but it’s up to you to keep all your hardware and program drivers current [he suggested ALL drivers be check annually] and that’s still no guarantee our program won’t blow up your system.” The long and short of it is that they have no idea what caused the error but the fact that uninstalling Roxio CD Creator blew up my system might suggest a driver conflict of some kind.

Isn’t it comforting to know that the software we rely on to keep our computers safe can so easily cause way more damage than the viruses do?!

I’d be heading straight for McAfee if I hadn’t already had the same kind of problem with them about three years ago (although not quite as multifaceted and severe) – and none of their tech support people spoke or wrote good English which made the situation much worse.

If anyone can recommend a more reliable solution to virus prevention than either Norton or McAfee, I’d be interested in your opinion.

Virginia

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For A/V both AVG and Avast have a very popular version and pay ‘Pro’ version that has a few more features. Pc_cillin is pay only and very well thought of. There are others also if you care to investigate. For a software firewall most loungers would recommend either Sygate or ZoneAlarm. Both have free and paid versions.

Joe

--Joe

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We use Trend Micro’s corporate product, OfficeScan, and I have installed PC-cillin, so I’ll go out on a limb and vouch for it (also, I do legal work for the company ). If you have a retail version of SystemWorks, it’s worth $25 off PC-cillin. Rebate form: http://www.trendmicro.com/ftp/products/pcc…llin-rebate.pdf%5B/url%5D.

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Glad to hear you do “legal work”, one can sure get in one fine mess if one does “illegal work”.

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Glad to hear you do “legal work”, one can sure get in one fine mess if one does “illegal work”.

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We use Trend Micro’s corporate product, OfficeScan, and I have installed PC-cillin, so I’ll go out on a limb and vouch for it (also, I do legal work for the company ). If you have a retail version of SystemWorks, it’s worth $25 off PC-cillin. Rebate form: http://www.trendmicro.com/ftp/products/pcc…llin-rebate.pdf%5B/url%5D.

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[indent]

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After the initial support conversation, I was emailed a detailed set of instructions for uninstalling all Symantec products, editing the registry, and cleaning out all left over Symantec/Norton files and folders. When I finally re-installed SystemWorks I got the same error.

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[/indent]

Is anyone else annoyed by this habit of software publishers? Why should I have to call a tech support number and have to jump through their hoops just to get the “double secret uninstall instructions” ? Shouldn’t this be included in the documentation? Or howabout the an Add/Remove choice for “Full & complete Uninstall”?

[indent]

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I’d be heading straight for McAfee if I hadn’t already had the same kind of problem with them about three years ago (although not quite as multifaceted and severe) – and none of their tech support people spoke or wrote good English which made the situation much worse.

---

[/indent]

I’ve been using AVG on my own home machine, plus the XP sp2 firewall in concert with the router’s simple packet filter. Seems to work OK for me. At work we use Symantec Corporate Edition 9, and we haven’t seen any problems.

I think the problem really probably doesn’t lie with Symantec and their base quality, but rather on the normal problems of a complicated softwrae product in an evolving technological setting, on a platform that isn’t all that resilent to errors and corruption caused by frequent software changes, compounded by support techs that really aren’t comptuer professionals (or even people that are all that skilled in fixing things in general), and are just readin from a script that has little information for them besides how to reinstall the software, and what _other_ apps have been found (by the real computer pros that you don’t get to talk to) to have conflict problems with their software.

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[indent]

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I think the problem really probably doesn’t lie with Symantec and their base quality, but rather on the normal problems of a complicated softwrae product in an evolving technological setting, on a platform that isn’t all that resilent to errors and corruption caused by frequent software changes, compounded by support techs that really aren’t comptuer professionals…

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[/indent]
I agree that it’s mostly the evolution of technology that underlies these severe problems. When I spoke to a third Symantec support rep and suggested that it would behoove the company to notify users to upgrade drivers before upgrading SystemWorks, he countered with something about how much time and effort it would take away from the real job of keeping up with new viruses if they were to worry about making sure their products worked with all software and drivers. He didn’t exactly address what I suggested but it sure sounded like a classic “not my job!” response to me.

I did some research on the web to see what other people had to say about all the various anti-virus software and it does look like all the programs have the same issues. Clean installs on new machines work fine but when you upgrade to a new version a few years later, look out! And the more varied kinds of software you use, the more likely the upgrade will blow things up. I wonder why Symantec (and others) doesn’t mention this to users before they attempt upgrades? It seems like the bad feelings toward the company are a lot worse after a system meltdown than they would be about being warned to update everything first.

Has anyone had the experience of upgrading any specific anti-virus software on the same computer without issue over a period of five years or more? If so, what program is it?

Virginia

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We’ve had good luck with OfficeScan, but it is designed for more homogeneous business environments, rather than the hurly burly of highly customized home computing environments. The biggest problem we had was when we changed the internal server that monitored and kept the individual PCs up to date. We had to add a utility to the start-up script to change a registry key on all the stations. Oh, and when someone did a bunch of Ghost installs without assigning new GUIDs to each workstations, our centralized reporting was confused for a week until we figured out what was happening. But as far as I can tell, we’ve gone through two major version updates and several minor ones — all automatically deployed from the central monitoring server — without any other major incidents. As the product gets more complicated (we roll out the version with the built-in client firewall soon), we’ll see if our luck holds.

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Heh, heh. “Hurly burly” is a pretty good descriptor for the wide variety of things I run on my PC — and there’s not even one single game!

The more I look at PC-cillin the better it looks. There is a side-by-side comparison of 10 different anti-virus packages on CNET which I found useful.
http://www.anti-virus-software-review.com/%5B/url%5D

What was even more revealing was reading the CNET reader opinions for each of these products. I wish I’d read their SystemWorks2004 opinions before I bought it — only 13% pro and 87% con from 63 people! (PC-cillin gets nearly the opposite ratings – 84% pro and 16% con from 261 people.)
http://reviews.cnet.com/Norton_SystemWorks…32.html?tag=tab%5B/url%5D
It seemed that the majority of the negative SystemWorks opinions had to do with upgrades. People who had been happy with earlier versions hated 2004. There was even a review posted by someone who – strangely enough – ended up with a corrupt registry because of a conflict with Roxio CD Creator. Sounds real familiar…

However, since I already own SystemWorks I’m wondering if I could still use the Utilities by doing a custom install without the anti-virus or firewall? I find the Utilities handy for tidying things up. Has anyone had experience loading only part of the SystemWorks package? Would I likely run into issues if I then loaded PC-cillin along side the Norton Utilities-sans-anti-virus?

Thanks again for all the help!
Virginia

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Assuming you can install the utilities separately, I suspect there would be no conflict with any other antivirus package. (The Utilities are a good thing.)

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Assuming you can install the utilities separately, I suspect there would be no conflict with any other antivirus package. (The Utilities are a good thing.)

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Heh, heh. “Hurly burly” is a pretty good descriptor for the wide variety of things I run on my PC — and there’s not even one single game!

The more I look at PC-cillin the better it looks. There is a side-by-side comparison of 10 different anti-virus packages on CNET which I found useful.
http://www.anti-virus-software-review.com/%5B/url%5D

What was even more revealing was reading the CNET reader opinions for each of these products. I wish I’d read their SystemWorks2004 opinions before I bought it — only 13% pro and 87% con from 63 people! (PC-cillin gets nearly the opposite ratings – 84% pro and 16% con from 261 people.)
http://reviews.cnet.com/Norton_SystemWorks…32.html?tag=tab%5B/url%5D
It seemed that the majority of the negative SystemWorks opinions had to do with upgrades. People who had been happy with earlier versions hated 2004. There was even a review posted by someone who – strangely enough – ended up with a corrupt registry because of a conflict with Roxio CD Creator. Sounds real familiar…

However, since I already own SystemWorks I’m wondering if I could still use the Utilities by doing a custom install without the anti-virus or firewall? I find the Utilities handy for tidying things up. Has anyone had experience loading only part of the SystemWorks package? Would I likely run into issues if I then loaded PC-cillin along side the Norton Utilities-sans-anti-virus?

Thanks again for all the help!
Virginia

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For reference, this is a follow up on my experience with PC-Cillin:

I discovered that PC-Cillin’s firewall does not allow file sharing on my mini home network. After an hour on the phone with Dell tech support trying to figure out what was wrong with my network settings (nothing), I uninstalled PC-Cillin and voila! I could share files with no problem. Shutting down the app from the System Tray was not enough. I called Trend Micro and they told me how to turn off the firewall without turning off the virus scanning (they are inextricably linked in the default install). That seemed to work and I thought things were OK for two whole days but then I installed my PDA software and now I’m back to reformatting the C: drive again.

I’m not kidding.

Did I mention that my router/print server also died in the mean time?

Jumping off a cliff is becoming more appealing by the minute.

Virginia

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For reference, this is a follow up on my experience with PC-Cillin:

I discovered that PC-Cillin’s firewall does not allow file sharing on my mini home network. After an hour on the phone with Dell tech support trying to figure out what was wrong with my network settings (nothing), I uninstalled PC-Cillin and voila! I could share files with no problem. Shutting down the app from the System Tray was not enough. I called Trend Micro and they told me how to turn off the firewall without turning off the virus scanning (they are inextricably linked in the default install). That seemed to work and I thought things were OK for two whole days but then I installed my PDA software and now I’m back to reformatting the C: drive again.

I’m not kidding.

Did I mention that my router/print server also died in the mean time?

Jumping off a cliff is becoming more appealing by the minute.

Virginia

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We’ve had good luck with OfficeScan, but it is designed for more homogeneous business environments, rather than the hurly burly of highly customized home computing environments. The biggest problem we had was when we changed the internal server that monitored and kept the individual PCs up to date. We had to add a utility to the start-up script to change a registry key on all the stations. Oh, and when someone did a bunch of Ghost installs without assigning new GUIDs to each workstations, our centralized reporting was confused for a week until we figured out what was happening. But as far as I can tell, we’ve gone through two major version updates and several minor ones — all automatically deployed from the central monitoring server — without any other major incidents. As the product gets more complicated (we roll out the version with the built-in client firewall soon), we’ll see if our luck holds.

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Has anyone had the experience of upgrading any specific anti-virus software on the same computer without issue over a period of five years or more? If so, what program is it?

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Do you mean the same computer with the same software installation ? Maybe I’m exceptional, but my windows installations rarely last even a single year. It’s usually more like 6 months before enough squirrely little issues and breakdowns and slowdowns and leftover DLLs and bits of registry garbage make it easier just to wipe the disk and reinstall everything.

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Reluctantly, I think I am joining the wipe-and-reinstall crowd although I think I’ll commit hari kiri if I have to do it every six months. Maybe after I do it a few more times I’ll get used to it and it won’t be such a big deal — but more likely it will be just long enough between I’ll forget everything I learned the previous time. I have been counting on the Utilities part of SystemWorks to keep things clean but the software doesn’t have a utility for proactively determining driver conflicts when you install new software. Now THAT would be a real value add! I won’t hold my breath though.

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Reluctantly, I think I am joining the wipe-and-reinstall crowd although I think I’ll commit hari kiri if I have to do it every six months. Maybe after I do it a few more times I’ll get used to it and it won’t be such a big deal — but more likely it will be just long enough between I’ll forget everything I learned the previous time. I have been counting on the Utilities part of SystemWorks to keep things clean but the software doesn’t have a utility for proactively determining driver conflicts when you install new software. Now THAT would be a real value add! I won’t hold my breath though.

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I’m probably just too lazy, but I have never done a reinstall since I’ve had Win 98 (approx 4 years). And yes, it’s slowed down some, but the thought of tweaking everything to get it just the way I want….

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I’m probably just too lazy, but I have never done a reinstall since I’ve had Win 98 (approx 4 years). And yes, it’s slowed down some, but the thought of tweaking everything to get it just the way I want….

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Has anyone had the experience of upgrading any specific anti-virus software on the same computer without issue over a period of five years or more? If so, what program is it?

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Do you mean the same computer with the same software installation ? Maybe I’m exceptional, but my windows installations rarely last even a single year. It’s usually more like 6 months before enough squirrely little issues and breakdowns and slowdowns and leftover DLLs and bits of registry garbage make it easier just to wipe the disk and reinstall everything.

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I think the problem really probably doesn’t lie with Symantec and their base quality, but rather on the normal problems of a complicated softwrae product in an evolving technological setting, on a platform that isn’t all that resilent to errors and corruption caused by frequent software changes, compounded by support techs that really aren’t comptuer professionals…

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I agree that it’s mostly the evolution of technology that underlies these severe problems. When I spoke to a third Symantec support rep and suggested that it would behoove the company to notify users to upgrade drivers before upgrading SystemWorks, he countered with something about how much time and effort it would take away from the real job of keeping up with new viruses if they were to worry about making sure their products worked with all software and drivers. He didn’t exactly address what I suggested but it sure sounded like a classic “not my job!” response to me.

I did some research on the web to see what other people had to say about all the various anti-virus software and it does look like all the programs have the same issues. Clean installs on new machines work fine but when you upgrade to a new version a few years later, look out! And the more varied kinds of software you use, the more likely the upgrade will blow things up. I wonder why Symantec (and others) doesn’t mention this to users before they attempt upgrades? It seems like the bad feelings toward the company are a lot worse after a system meltdown than they would be about being warned to update everything first.

Has anyone had the experience of upgrading any specific anti-virus software on the same computer without issue over a period of five years or more? If so, what program is it?

Virginia

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After the initial support conversation, I was emailed a detailed set of instructions for uninstalling all Symantec products, editing the registry, and cleaning out all left over Symantec/Norton files and folders. When I finally re-installed SystemWorks I got the same error.

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Is anyone else annoyed by this habit of software publishers? Why should I have to call a tech support number and have to jump through their hoops just to get the “double secret uninstall instructions” ? Shouldn’t this be included in the documentation? Or howabout the an Add/Remove choice for “Full & complete Uninstall”?

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I’d be heading straight for McAfee if I hadn’t already had the same kind of problem with them about three years ago (although not quite as multifaceted and severe) – and none of their tech support people spoke or wrote good English which made the situation much worse.

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I’ve been using AVG on my own home machine, plus the XP sp2 firewall in concert with the router’s simple packet filter. Seems to work OK for me. At work we use Symantec Corporate Edition 9, and we haven’t seen any problems.

I think the problem really probably doesn’t lie with Symantec and their base quality, but rather on the normal problems of a complicated softwrae product in an evolving technological setting, on a platform that isn’t all that resilent to errors and corruption caused by frequent software changes, compounded by support techs that really aren’t comptuer professionals (or even people that are all that skilled in fixing things in general), and are just readin from a script that has little information for them besides how to reinstall the software, and what _other_ apps have been found (by the real computer pros that you don’t get to talk to) to have conflict problems with their software.

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Here is an update on this unfortunate saga. Long story short, nothing worked to get rid of the Auto-Protect error and, thanks to Symantec tech support, if I didn’t have a second hard drive I’d be paying someone to retrieve data off of my C: drive right now. Here’s how it played out…

After trying all of the suggestions posted here, I finally called Symantec. Eventually they were convinced that this was a no-charge for support problem. One thing that will be important to anyone else who runs into the 2004,517 error is that before you call Symantec you have to determine that some other service isn’t conflicting with Norton on startup. The instructions are on the Symantec web page for dealing with Error 2004,517. One of the expandable links says “for Windows XP Only” – except Symantec expects you to check the same things if you’re running Windows 2000 even though they don’t say so. If you’re running Windows 2000 may have to download the msconfig utility to your desktop.

After the initial support conversation, I was emailed a detailed set of instructions for uninstalling all Symantec products, editing the registry, and cleaning out all left over Symantec/Norton files and folders. When I finally re-installed SystemWorks I got the same error.

I got another support rep on the phone and we went through every conceivable scenario. I was on the phone for 3 1/2 hours but alas, the whole thing ended when the tech support guy suggested that I try uninstalling Roxio CD Creator (someone else had reported some sort of minor conflict with it). After the uninstall process I rebooted my computer and got the blue screen of death. At that point the Symantec support rep told me I was on my own. My computer was so jacked up that I couldn’t even get my CD drive to read my recovery disk. Fortunately I also have a laptop computer and a Dell support person helped me copy boot files to floppies and we then used those to install Windows on my second hard drive. I’ve been able to retrieve and back up all my data from the C: drive that way but still have to reformat the C: drive and reload windows and all the programs and all the backed up data. What a @#$&% MESS!

Symantec didn’t have much to say except “gee, we’re really sorry this happened but it’s up to you to keep all your hardware and program drivers current [he suggested ALL drivers be check annually] and that’s still no guarantee our program won’t blow up your system.” The long and short of it is that they have no idea what caused the error but the fact that uninstalling Roxio CD Creator blew up my system might suggest a driver conflict of some kind.

Isn’t it comforting to know that the software we rely on to keep our computers safe can so easily cause way more damage than the viruses do?!

I’d be heading straight for McAfee if I hadn’t already had the same kind of problem with them about three years ago (although not quite as multifaceted and severe) – and none of their tech support people spoke or wrote good English which made the situation much worse.

If anyone can recommend a more reliable solution to virus prevention than either Norton or McAfee, I’d be interested in your opinion.

Virginia

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