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Symantec Competing Unfairly Against Spybot?
frankbaird writes "Symantec has been claiming for months that the anti-spyware program Spybot-Search & Destroy corrupts Norton Ghost images. Spybot has tried to convince them this is a false positive. After having been ignored, and this is the second time Symantec has claimed a false positive against Spybot, the makers of Spybot have gone public. They claim that rather than compete fairly with quality products, Symantec is resorting to libel."
This couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that the newer versions of Ghost (post-2003, iirc) are complete and utter crap and don't work properly, could it? I believe they repackaged a program called Drive Image as Ghost 9 and that it has absolutely nothing to do with prior versions of Ghost.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
It would explain why my backup of gho images are now giving compression errors.
Such a shame too, ghost took all the despair out of installing windows. (FWIW a netinstall from local server is still quicker than windows install off CD).
Why UNIX?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So is Microsoft, owners of Gator^WClaria. What's your point?
While this is all quite suspicious and Slashdotters love the very idea of a conspiracy, I'm not yet in Spybot's camp here. First of all, one week to investigate and respond to an issue is way too short for a company as large as Symantec. Who does Spybot think they are to demand a one week response. Even the Department of Justice couldn't make such a demand, and if the DoJ did Slashdotters would be all up in arms over the evilness of it all.
But, the next question is how did this come to be? I'm sure that Symantec didn't write everyone letters saying that Spybot sucks. I even searched the knowledgebase and could not find any reference to Spybot S&D. It may be there, but I couldn't easily find it. So, how did this come up?
My first thought, with no further information, is that Ghost users were having a problem with corrupt images. I further suspect that Symantec found that by removing Spybot S&D the problem was resolved. Regardless of the real cause, the previous steps would certainly lead me to believe that the problem lay with Spybot S&D and if I were getting enough calls about it, I would put the fix in my knowledgebase as well.
All I'm saying is that where there is smoke, there is fire. At first blush there does seem to be some sort of compatibility issue with Ghost and Spybot but, more information is definitely needed before I can jump into Spybot's camp.
We've been deploying images with Ghost 8, AV 8, 9, and now 10 with SpyBot for at least a year and a half now and have never had any problems.
I know, I know, anecdotal evidence and all that, but still we've never had a corrupt ghost image in all that time.
Unfortunately, Symantec keep buying nice software (Paragorn Partition Magic was the last one I remember) and making it suck... I always remember the gold times of Norton Utilities in MS-DOS where they had a enhanced command shell, and the encrypted disk [diskreet IIRC] and a surface test, NDD that did worked... those where the day, but after Peter Norton sold all those cool progs to Symantec, everything changed and now they suck (and I think even MORE than Microsoft).
p.s. where would you put the
in my post? =oP
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Well I emailed Mr. Guido Sanchidrian and asked him to validate the truth about the article. His email is in the article and I'm sure his mailbox will fill up over the weekend. :)
/HH
Haven't had the chance to test this issue yet but it sounds highly unlikely that a scan would corrupt a file. I've gave up on Symantec a couple of years ago and have been using alternatives such as AVG and Mcafee. As such, I still find that 2-3 products run in conjunction work best. Speaking of issues, there is one nagging issue I still have with Symtantec NA (version 8/9) for work. We use a content management tool called Teamsite (made my Interwoven) and they don't work well together (short summary). We called Interwoven and they said Symantec is the problem. We called Symantec and they told us that Interwoven has to fix it. Sigh... So you can imagine how far this problem has gone in being resolved.... Frustrating to say the least...
Every time I have tried Norton's Anti Virus or their Internet Security package it's ended in me letting it expire. I only used it on my wife and kids computers since they are on windows. As is often said and from my own experiences it is a resource hog, without a doubt.
What really ticked me off though was once I actually needed support from Symantec and found out that they wouldn't offer support because the machines were dual boot. What difference would this actually make? It's not like I wanted them to scan the linux install too. lol
Now it's Spybot S&D,Ad-aware and AVG (free version). I don't feel like I am entitled to support since you get what you pay for. But, at least I'm not paying the yearly subscription/extortion money to Symantec in hopes that "nothing will happen" to the windows installs.
Same here. Our ghost server at one time had spybot running with full immunity protection on it and we never had a problem. Also images with spybot in them ran ok once imaged. The only thing I could think of that symantec would be taking about is teatimer doing something wierd to block the ghost server from writing to the drive correctly, and that's a real long shot considering that teatimer needs user verification for just about everything it does.
This situation doesn't surprise me comming from Symantec however. I ditched them around NAV 2001 and never looked back, Especially when you could predict when the next antivirus version would come out because the previous version would "mysteriously" start having problems or crashing about a week before the next version release.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Perhaps Symantec tried using their own ghost explorer to browse images, got as far as seeing the S&D folder under program files then ghost explorer crashed. This naturally led them to the conclusion that Spybot had corrupted their images and not the fact that their ghost explorer application is crap and will randomly crash when browsing images or extracting files.
I remember when I was trying to pull a PST file from a very old desktop image of a user's PC about 2 PC's ago (I keep an archive on DVD of old images locked away... for later recovery). Ghost Explorer would retrieve the PST and it'd be corrupted. I ended up having to restore the image to a HD and then mount the drive and copy the PST over.
Tes
garbage indeed, check this. I uninstalled it, but macafee (also removed, deleted etc) was still bugging me so i checked msconfig yet again. well then. Macafee was hidden within that rootkitted hidden norton recycler folder and was still running, well both programs and that hidden folder are now gone (showing hidden files/folders did not show it up, i had to type it in. Regedit to remove the recycler folder i presume, so far i just removed what was in it. yes norton uninstall DID NOT remove that folder)
I ran Gamespy 3D and Arcade on a computer that had Symantec Corporate Client 10.0 (ok ok, in a not so "corporate" environment) and their stupid malware scanner kept finding these two products as adware and removing them completely without any trace. I tried to put them on the ignore list and it kept doing it. The funny thing is, I own both of these products and have advertisements DISABLED yet this piece of shit symantec software would not stop removing them no matter what I did. I ended up going on Symantec website and, what do you know, they have these products listed as Adware. I contacted both Symantec and GameSpy without much help (Gamespy actually responded and basically said there wasn't much they could do). If you go on Google and search for "Symantec Corporate Gamespy" you will see a link straight to Symantec. Unfortunately that link is broken, but Google cache will show it. Maybe they finally fixed it? I don't know. But their description for the product is retarded:
"Adware.GameSpyArcade is a game server browser that displays advertisements when the compromised computer is connected to the Internet through its customized browser."
How many products do this? They even mention the following:
"This program has to be manually installed."
Compromised computer.. with a manually installed program. Riiiiight. I know that programs don't have to be manually installed due to worms, etc. but Symantec needs to pull their heads out of their asses if they really think this is adware. If this is their definition of adware, there are sooo many products that could be removed from a typical users computer.
Fucking Symantec.
Norton used to be great. Remember those days? I am computer consultant for small and medium sized businesses and each time I see norton installed I suggest my clients to use an alternative. One client recently exclaimed "After I installed Norton, I ended dealing with Norton this, Norton that, I just want my computer to work." If Norton has an issue with a third party app, perhaps they should patch their software.
I see what you're saying, and I agree that in some cases there would be no other choice but to publish an incompatibility, but I find the fact that they haven't produced any evidence very suspicious. Especially when the majority of Ghost-users on here are saying that they've had no problems.
To know recursion, you must first know recursion.
you've been employed by Symantec for how long now?
if your little homebrew test did indeed have that result, that's very far-fetched. This doesn't take into account the fact that Winblows XP whines with a BSOD/reboot if you replace parts in the system that weren't there at the time of installation. This means that not only do(es) the target system(s) have to be IDENTICAL in hardware configuration, in order to run a ghosted XP image, but because the hardware in the target PC (recieving the image) has to be identical for Winblows XP to even BOOT, I can't envisage Spybot finding so many changes to make, unless your image is chalk-full of garbage that you inadvertently left behind.
If your result was indeed as you posted and you can claim that all software registry entries/files/etc were indeed legit (read: NOT spyware-dependant P2P applications and the like), then yours could simply be an isolated case. But from personal experience, although I have not (and will not) attempt to recreate this user's test, I can say that this claim is unverified, unduplicated rubbish.
One test does not a confirmation make.
About those people you phoned: Had you stopped to think that maybe they were PAID to say what they said?
In a perfect (or at least better) world, Symantec would recognize Quality software and work with it, rather then compete with it. I look forward to the day Symantec executives begin jumping en masse from helicopters, sans parachutes.
how is babby formed?
Whoever modded your post 3, Informative - must not have read it carefully. If your post is not tongue in cheek, I call BS.
"I'm very well versed in Norton Ghost, but I have little experience with Spybot S&D. So, I decided to test out the application."
"Q: How familiar are you with Spybot?
A: Very familiar."
So, which is it - do you have "little experience with Spybot" or are you "Very familiar" with Spybot?
And your post just gets worse from there. Spybot corrupts the OS? Problems with Spybot installing toolbars?
What the hell?...Many of us here have used Spybot and have recommended it to users. Trust me when I say we would not do so were it to have all the problems you speak of.
That being said, IMO, Symantec products have sucked for a few years now. We switched to AVG and Acronis True Image years ago and have been much happier since.
This guy is full of complete and utter bullshit. Almost every helpdesk I've had any dealings with, and two I've worked at, recommend SpyBot and Ad-Aware incessantly. I've never seen it damage a system. The only problems I've ever had with either is that they occasionally can break winsock when removing some particularly annoying spyware. There's utilities that easily fix the damaged registry keys however.
Plus, this persons example makes NO SENSE. Why would spybot go crazy after an image was restored, but not before, unless Ghost (AKA Drive Image) did something wrong when making/restoring the image? Not to mention that Ghost 10 (Aka Drive Image) has a long history of generating corrupt images when making them while running the system. This is a documented problem on many Ghost and Drive Image forums and Symantec has demonstrated that it doesn't care. (See http://ghost.radified.com/) Hot-imaging is a non-feature prone to making bad images.