Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Symantec Hit by Product Activation Glitch

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the humbled-beginnings dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to this article, Symantec has hit a snag in their product activation scheme. On a certain machine, the software machine would always ask for the activation when the computer is started or restarted, despite the fact that they have thoroughly tested the scheme." According to the article, Symantec has finally managed to replicate the problem, and those hit by the bug are asked to contact Symantec's support channels. However, there's no mention of a fix yet.

2 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft's Product Activation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    got to be such a PITA!

    My company standardised on Office 2000 at a cost of > $300 per seat (10 seats). The original activation was sooo easy; we have an "always-on" Internet connection, the software connected to Microsoft's site and we were off to the races in about 30 seconds after installing.

    As computers will do, several went belly up and I had to replace them. One needed nothing more than a bigger hard disk, but required re-authorization. In the meantime (less than 6 mos), MS had released Office XP. Wouldn't you know that activation was no longer so easy! The software kept coming up with "server not responding" and I was forced to call to get an authorization code. This activity included an extra copy that we bought that had never been activated! So much for their promises of being easy to authorize.

    After a couple of 20 minute (mostly on hold) sessions to get authorization numbers, I tracked down a cracked copy of Office. I still keep the original licenses in a locked cabinet in case we are ever audited by the software gestapo, but I re-install off of the cracked copy to avoid the authorization. I personally think this is a forced upgrade policy.

    We can no longer buy Office 2000. What do you think I'm going to do when we need a new copy of Office? Microsoft has forced me to pirate their software!

    (posted as AC for obvious reasons)

  2. This is particularly bad in this type product by henryhbk · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The 2 kinds of products you don't want activations snags in(because they are really needed for emergencies by the consumer) are anti-virus software and disk-recovery software. I mean if your hard-disk is corrupt or you have a bad virus (please no debates on whether norton's has helped/hurt you, or whether you running some virus immune OS, I'm speaking conceptually here) and you can't activate your de-corrupting utility, then you a) wasted your money and b) are screwed!

    Symantec should realize their market, and for those who paid, expect to be able to use their product.

    Luckily they don't have this yet on the macintosh side...