Problem with SYMEvent

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When I select MS-DOS Prompt, sometimes I get the following message:

This program has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated.
Quit all programs, and then restart your computer.

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If the program consistently encounters problems, click the Start button, then select Help, Troubleshooting, and

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John, you need to download the latest version of SymEvent from Symantec’s website. It’s a self installing EXE file – just double click, wait till it’s finished, and reboot.

SymEvent is a low-level system hook that Symantec products use to monitor system activity – notably Norton Antivirus and pcAnywhere.

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Hi Mark

This seem to fix my problem, problem was intermittent, time will tell.

Was my symptom a known problem?

The web site did not explain what this update was fixing.

Thanks again, John

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I’m not sure if it was a known issue or not, quite frankly – what I remember is having the exact same problem, and determining that updating SymEvent was the cure. If I recall correctly there was no mention of it in Symantec’s online support docs.

What the update does is to replace a file called symevent(.sys, .386) which serves Symantec products such as pcAnywhere with a hook into Windows, allowing them to monitor what is happening. Since it interacts at such a low level with Windows, when it goes belly up as it did with you, you start having a miscellaneous assortment of problems. All I can say is thank goodness it’s not a problem for you anymore!

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