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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.
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.
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!
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.