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shirenomadI installed Norton 2003 a couple months back. Never had an anti-viral program on my system before, believe it or not. More to the point, never really needed one... the only time a virus ever infected my computer, it happened purely because I was using Outlook Express and its "run all scripts" feature. Since switching to Eudora, nothing. I'm careful about what I click on, and my current email accounts are all protected on the server side. Nonetheless, Mom and Dad (who are less cautious in other manners) were worried about vulnerabilities, and offered me a copy of Norton. Hey, it was free, so I took it.
Norton keeps its program updated by running a sub-program called "LiveUpdate" whenever you're online. Rather sluggish over dialup, really, and it takes a while to figure out you aren't connected when Windows first boots up, tying up resources. First problem, but not the most crucial.
One of the things that needed to be updated was, evidently, LiveUpdate itself. You can do that by downloading a separate patch without using LiveUpdate, but no one informed me. Ergo, the first update I attempted was through a slightly buggy program. My system froze when the updates attempted to install. Through trial and error, I figured out which portion of the update was causing the freeze-up and chose to install everything but that portion, which avoided the problem for the moment.
I hunted around Symantec's website for a while, trying to find a solution. Most of the tech support suggestions centered around "something's corrupted; delete and re-download". Annoying, given my slow connection speed. Also failed every time. Second problem. Still not the most crucial.
Saturday I went final solution. It was obvious something within Norton had been corrupted, and I figured at this stage the fastest way to find it would be to uninstall the whole damn program and start over (this time using the independant LiveUpdate patch before upgrading anything else). If that didn't work, I'd officially declare Norton to be Not Worth The Effort and leave it off.
When Windows rebooted, my registry was a smoking ruin.
I was thankfully able to salvage all data, but nearly everything will need to be reinstalled, including most drivers. I've moved everything over to another computer and, after double-checking my options with a friend of Dad's who has more experience in the matter, will probably reformat the whole mess tomorrow. It'll likely take me most of the week to get my system back to something resembling its original state.
Without Norton.
The upside of the day was another late Christmas card. Thanks, Shadey, needed that. I'll see your murr and raise you a kweh.
Norton keeps its program updated by running a sub-program called "LiveUpdate" whenever you're online. Rather sluggish over dialup, really, and it takes a while to figure out you aren't connected when Windows first boots up, tying up resources. First problem, but not the most crucial.
One of the things that needed to be updated was, evidently, LiveUpdate itself. You can do that by downloading a separate patch without using LiveUpdate, but no one informed me. Ergo, the first update I attempted was through a slightly buggy program. My system froze when the updates attempted to install. Through trial and error, I figured out which portion of the update was causing the freeze-up and chose to install everything but that portion, which avoided the problem for the moment.
I hunted around Symantec's website for a while, trying to find a solution. Most of the tech support suggestions centered around "something's corrupted; delete and re-download". Annoying, given my slow connection speed. Also failed every time. Second problem. Still not the most crucial.
Saturday I went final solution. It was obvious something within Norton had been corrupted, and I figured at this stage the fastest way to find it would be to uninstall the whole damn program and start over (this time using the independant LiveUpdate patch before upgrading anything else). If that didn't work, I'd officially declare Norton to be Not Worth The Effort and leave it off.
When Windows rebooted, my registry was a smoking ruin.
I was thankfully able to salvage all data, but nearly everything will need to be reinstalled, including most drivers. I've moved everything over to another computer and, after double-checking my options with a friend of Dad's who has more experience in the matter, will probably reformat the whole mess tomorrow. It'll likely take me most of the week to get my system back to something resembling its original state.
Without Norton.
The upside of the day was another late Christmas card. Thanks, Shadey, needed that. I'll see your murr and raise you a kweh.
