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Microsoft Anti-Spyware Removes Norton Anti-Virus
An anonymous reader writes "According to a story over at Washingtonpost.com, the latest definitions file for Microsoft's Anti-Spyware beta flags Symantec's Norton Antivirus products as a password-stealing trojan and prompts users to delete portions of the program. Users who follow the instructions hose their installation of Norton, requiring delicate Windows registry edits and a complete removal/reinstall of Norton. Microsoft's support forum is quickly filling up with complaints about this problem, many from businesses that have been pretty hard hit. This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments."
Probably the best thing any user can have happen. The removal or norton anti-virus.
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
Norton could be described as spyware. Norton assumes your system is there to do nothing but run Norton.
Wait... Is not spyware? It's definitely malware.
Is it really worth the hassle to use Windows, especially when it comes to business users? I mean, when I set up a system for a firm, they want it to work. They don't want to be hassled with issues like this. This sort of nonsense drastically cuts down on the performance of the IT staff, as they're forced to deal with it rather than with other issues.
Each time I hear about a problem like this, I'm glad I recommend and employ the use of Solaris and OpenBSD. There's no worry about installing anti-virus software, let alone anti-virus software from one vendor which targets anti-virus software from another.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
what was microsoft thinking
MS Antispyware isn't useless after all!
Join the Empire! http://www.empirereborn.net/
Here's a link to the actual discussion. Looks like this has been corrected with the latest definitions.
Hmmm.
Seriously. Considering how good NAV is at sucking up memory and CPU cycles, the only way anyone probably noticed was when their computer suddenly seemed much smoother and more responsive.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
it'll uninstall Windows!
Microsoft knows something we don't?
Norton/Symantec hasn't always been nice (are they now?) - remember when Norton Utilities couldn't be removed on DOS installations? The only option was to totally format the drive and start over. I know people who won't even try Norton/Symantec products after all of those years because of these types of problems.
This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments.
Why even use Anti-Spyware when Norton Anti-Virus (corporate edition at least) can detect and remove spyware in real time?
Get your Unix fortune now!
First off, good call on "don't use beta in production!" I am sure many of us have had to make the call on using a beta product before. I know I used XP SP2 when it was beta because it had so many things that I needed at the time. However, I paid for it in many ways. I would still make the call again but I at least did it with eyes open.
Second, what kind of moron installs that software, sees it tell you that your Norton software has to go, and then follow through with it when you are in a business environment? I just find that to be amazing.
Third, this strikes at one of the main reasons I have thought Microsoft's move into the anti-malware industry was a bad one. Considering how protective they are of their IP and their EULAs, it suprises the hell out of me they would violate other company's EULAs (adware companies) among other things.
Fourth and finally, there are going to be some lawsuits which really means more money for findlaw.com.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Well I can't say I'm surprised. Microsoft just announced their own antivirus subscription service and now their Anti-Spyware product deletes another anti-virus product. Does this really come as a shock to anyone?
Microsoft did it on purpose.
I havn't RTFM since it won't load here at work, but how in the world does something like that happen accidentally?
"To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable."
Shouldn't it be the other way round?
I am fairly sure that Microsoft Anti-Spyware does not seek out Norton AV files specifically and flag them, but instead looks at what the files may do if run then alerts the user accordingly. If this is true then it makes me wonder what exactly Norton Anti-Virus is doing to cause Microsoft Anti-spyware to flag it as malicious. Anti-virus software should not have anything to do with password storage or password mining, so if there is a file included that contains such code then it should be removed immediately from the product.
For once MS did something right. If only it removed Norton and installed AVG...
Norton AV 200$ continues to be total crap, may every rep from Symantec who bitchs about this have to spend a month only working on systems that have been hosed by their very own horrible AV package.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
"This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments."
Then how are we supposed to use Microsoft products? I thougt all Microsofts products was more or less beta.
HTTP/1.1 400
install DOJ's Anti-Trust© to remove the offending product. Of course, it has been a little buggy since the Jan 2001 release.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
You mean the REPLACEMENT of a Symantec product with a Microsoft product?
Yeah best thing ever.
Should also replace firefox with IE7
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
The users who buy this software for $2 (in U.S. dollars) will get what they deserve.
Ensuring that customers who rip off American software companies are burned badly will quickly end the software piracy problem.
I agree. I am a computer services provider for mostly home users and I often find NAV and internet tools to be single greatest contributor to draining system resources. I usually recommend disabling NAV, using safe internet practices, and scanning weekly or if there appears to be a problem.
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While that might be the case, considering Microsoft has announced its own anti-virus product, this is most certainly, rather than a mere beta product foible, anti-competitive behavior (against a competing anti-virus product) by Microsoft. That's a no-no for Microsoft to be doing under the consent decree they signed the last time they were convicted of being an illegal monopoly. Nevertheless, it certainly is standard Microsoft behavior. Why compete when you own the OS and can use your software products to handicap the competition?
This has nothing to do with using beta products in production or not. This has to do with the failure of big organizations to recognize that /any/ update applied to all computers within the organization should /always/ be tested, however short. I have fought hard with a previous client, as in the past one of the datfiles updates for McAfee managed to render most PC's useles becuase of a bug in the engine that was triggered by this particular datfile.
Really, in a big organization, any update going to all PC's must always be tested.
Software like NAV must inherently use the CPU on a frequent basis. Recall, it often has to scan data on each file access. Each time an application is started, or a DLL is loaded, it must perform a scan. Some of these products also protect from malicious VBScript scripts. When you're dealing with a product that also includes a firewall component, you'll incur some overhead during network activity. And of course, many of these products also include email filtering, which will again consume some CPU and RAM.
While I wouldn't call NAV (or much other Windows software) well-written, we can't pretend that it'd be possible for them to offer the services and capabilities they do without using the amount of resources they use. Continual resource usage is inherent to the task they perform.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
And if you had been first, what would your comment have been?
Does anyone else think it's a bit odd that it targets it's only _major_ competitor on the market; after all, there haven't been any reports about this happening to other A-V programs that I've seen. Or could this have been intentionally done by an inside person without others knowing with the sole intent on making microsoft the fall guy once again? Either way it looks like microsoft and symantec are going to be having a field day.
"Yeah, but by we know yo mama gives EVERYBODY root privilege..." -jpetts (208163)
I heard rumours about that the early betas of Microsoft Anti-Spyware removed Internet Explorer. ;)
This also brings up some interesting possibilities. Is it possible to craft a virus to deliberately have similar signatures to a commercial product? An anti-virus company that doesn't have quite all commercial applications on hand to test against could be caught by that. Maybe not, but I'm sure someone will try now.
I'm glad I run Linux, and when things like this happen, I wish everyone did.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Spyware companies have already sued for having their stuff labeled "bad", so you can expect Microsoft to get in legal trouble over this.
Not that it will matter to them, given their position in the market.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
and make their anti-spyware utility remove Windows.
perception is reality
I run both on XP Pro. They (and XP) are both completely updated. They both still "work." Microsoft did not flag NAV or any of its parts. NAV still "works." Yet another excuse to dump on MS. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. And the CIA invented and spread AIDS, too.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
... but a lot of older systems get hit hard by virus protection overhead. Machines with less than 256mb of RAM are pretty much dead in the water. I personally use a free version of AVG, and only run it once a month or so. I'm not running a business out of my home, and viruses don't usually cause me any trouble.
I once had a copy of Norton that hosed my Windows 3.1 installation when I ran a virus scan. Of course, this was many many years ago, but could it possibly be retribution for this seemingly unrelated act?
SYSOP ('sih-sop) n.: the guy laughing at your typing.
It might just be me, but I can't really see a downside to this.
I'd do the same if I was cleaning malware off someone's computer. Norton deliberately makes itself hard to uninstall, that qualifies it in my book.
I am trolling
Mod Parent Up
-1 Flaimbait?!? It's a valid opinion.
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Quote:
...maybe this should be changed to, "This should be a cautionary tale about deploying Windoze in production enviroments".
This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments.
Unquote:
The group with the complaints is no longer on their web page. I guess Microsoft wants to keep the lid on this.
While MS can't test every single combination software avaible, what does their QA team do?
Next up: removal of Firefox and OpenOffice.
Those doctored images of it flagging Firefox from when it first came out might just turn out to be true...
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
This should be a cautionary tale about deploying Microsoft products in production environments.
[my first ever /. post!] I run a small ISP, and if I had a buck for every customer whose systems have been overrun and rendered useless by Norton Internet Security, I'd have one of those special computers at IRS to calculate my tax bill like Gates...
You know it's bad when they bundle it with every flipping internet banking account and supermarket PC for free...
I run NAV 8 and the MS Anti-Spyware beta. No problems and I just updated and ran a scan. Maybe it doesn't affect NAV 8?
The tool removes every trace of Norton from your system. It does a better job than the normal uninstaller.
Like ya all have never experienced one of those before... lol
Excuse me? NAV is a steaming heap of complete crap.
AVG does the job better, faster, and with far less resource consumption. Every time I have been called on to disinfect a machine which was running NAV, I recommned the owners switch to AVG. Without exception, they comment on how much more responsive their system is. I have little trouble convincing them to support Grisoft by getting the not-for-free version.
The machine I am on right now is running (probably unnecessarily) a full AVG install. It checks my email, it checks my downloads, it checks all of the crud running on the system, and it does this while burning some fraction of 1% of the CPU and a tiny bit of memory.
If you are currently running NAV, disable it (if you can) and try running AVG for a couple of days. I think you'll notice the difference.
Perhaps they were thinking "Well we got away with it when it came to DR-DOS and windows"
I imagine the judge supervising the DoJ settlement with Microsoft will be getting some quite interesting letters and asking some very hard questions this coming week.
Does MS Anti-Spyware still not detect Gator^H^H^H^H^HClaria crap as malware?
If alternatives become more common then Windows, then expect the same sorts of attacks.
Sure, in theory the system level is more secure, but if something blows away user data, its still just as effective.
And dont kid yourself, unix has holes too.. Just no one digs deep enough.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Should be insightful. Personally I can see why Norton could be ID'ed as maleware, it causes worse performance by itself than any amount of spyware I've ever seen.
It causes your e-mail and network to break sometimes, it's the most damaging piece of commercial software besides windows itself I've ever seen.
Honestly mcafee is right up there with it, I've never had any of the top 3 free virus scanners break any system but then they don't try to be 6 packages in one and aren't overly aggressive in scanning - hogging your resources.
The only thing that kept companies like Symantec in business was the lack of an MS security model. Now that MS is under extreem pressure to change things they might have to sink the phony so called "anti-virus" industry once and for all. The price the consumer has had to pay for the security bull is enormous.
Maybe they've fixed this by now, but have you ever tried to uninstall Norton from a system that came preinstalled with a trial version? Ever get that wonderful message that says "Please insert CD."?? WHAT CD?! THERE IS NONE! And why should I need a CD to UNINSTALL? Burn in hell, Symantec. I congratulate Microsoft on this one.
Maybe it's just me, but one of the key components of ensuring availability of computer systems for end users involves NEVER running beta or pre-production code on production systems. I can understand using a release product in a controlled environment for testing of a new product in your production environment, but anyone who uses pure beta software in the work environment is asking to face these kinds of trouble and shows they have absolutely no idea what they're doing when it comes to providing IT services and technologies. Beta code, by it's very nature, is going to have and cause problems.
Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...
I switched to Symantec AntiVirus a while ago and it seems to be much better. My school also runs this. I remember that Norton was a slow piece. This one labeled as just Symantec AntiVirus seems to only take up less 2MB of RAM at the most. Anyone else have an opinion on this version? Getting definitions is exactly the same as Norton, but without a yearly subscription.
Does most of the buiness apps in the office today run on Solaris or BSD? ESPECIALLY BSD? Hell no.
Have you ever heard of Open Office? It's not quite up to Windows Office standards but it is rapidly getting there so it isn't as if Solaris is totally missing office apps. I will admit Solaris doesn't measure up to Windows as a workstation in terms of software diversity but it isn't exactly completely missing any options at all either. You might also want to keep in mind that Mac OS.X is a BSD derivetive, and is certainly not completely missing business apps. That being said I think he was referring less to desktop systems and more to server systems where, believe it or not both Solaris and BSD spank Windows in terms of stability and the effort required to keep them secure and the selection of server software is every bit as good as that for Windows 2003. Yes there are some business apps that are missing on Unix workstations but this is increalingly being rendered less of an issue by companies like Oracle (yes, Oracle makes more than just databases) who concentrate on multi platform, web based, client OS independent, business solutions. It is actually becoming quite possible to build a powerful Microsoft free business IT setup, with apps specially tailored to your needs, that will allow you to deploy Solaris, Linux, BSD, AIX and OS.X clients and servers and that is every bit as good as the MS systems who lock you into the malware ridden MS client OS'es, I have seen it done. In practice future business IT networks will see an increaingly mixed setup of Windows/*NIX servers but especially of workstations. I won't claim that Windows workstations will disappear or even lose their majority market share but perplexed MCSEs will increasingly have to deal with alien workstations running Linux and OS.X.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
this i agree with in full i don't recommend norton anymore due to the high load it puts on machines.
a year ago, Microsoft Anti-spyware removed Internet Explorer!
Probably enterprise version versus home version: the home version is a piece of crap.. The enterprise version was kinda lean last time I had an encounter with it.
It's still no exuse.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
That is most likely the Corperate version of Symantec AV, which is *far* better than the desktop version that most people usually purchase. The corp version just sits in the tray until something comes along that might need some attention.
EveryDNS. Use it. It works.
AC's need not reply
Don't forget that if Windows worked properly, you wouldn't even need anti-virus / anti-spyware! So their intention is to profit off their own inadequacies?!?!! Unfuckingbelievable. And the beta testers just playing right along... la la la... This is akin to hiring someone who is incompetant, incapable of completing a job due to being a complete screw up... and they then demand a raise because they to have to work the double duty of correcting their own screw ups... wtf? How is Microsoft even getting away with this??!!! Windows should have a mandatory product recall, just like cars... if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do... its broken. Send the stinking thing back.
The Admin and the Engineer
I mean, C'MON! You mean to tell me that NAV has any sort of signature that matches some malware? (I'm not talking about their signature database! Anybody writing malware detecters should have enough brains to be able to handled a competitor's signature database! Get serious!)
This comes RIGHT AFTER MICROSOFT ANNOUNCES THEIR NEW SECURITY PACKAGE DUE THIS SUMMER?
Jesus Baron Von Christ! If this isn't obviously anticompetitive behavior on the part of Gates, I don't know what is!
Now everybody will tell me, "How can this be? Microsoft will be the one blamed, not Norton!"
Oh, contraire, mon frere! How many end users will know WHY their Norton stopped working? Unless they call in a techie to TELL THEM, they won't know. They'll just assume Norton sucks (which it does, but for other reasons) and dump it - just in time to hear about Microsoft's new AV suite via Update or some other means.
This is straight fucking monopoly behavior. Good luck trying to get the Bush administration to even look at it!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
From the Slashdot story: "This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments."
That's not what happens in the case of Microsoft's virtual monopoly. Many people, when they find their computer has become slow, buy a new computer. Then Microsoft sells another copy of Windows, which, of course, still has huge security risks.
The incredible CPU-sucking of Norton software also helps Microsoft sell more copies of Windows, also.
Somehow Microsoft has arranged that owners of Microsoft Windows XP must pay again when they get a new computer.
It's miserable to have billionaires who care only about money riding on your back. That's why open source is necessary.
AVG is by far the best Ive found, and its free. At least the version I install on windows machines. Glad I knew enough when I got my Mac I didnt buy that worthless software.
I strongly suspect that it is not possible to craft a virus [0] so that it's indistinguishable from a piece of commercial software - unless it it's functionally identical (in which case ... the point is moot).
The core argument is that a virus scanner that uses signature matching can match on any part of the virus. It is therefore insufficient to have only part of the virus matching code from some false positive source - all subsequences of the virus must make a false positive in some other known good software. If there is one subsequence (which need not have a unity nor regular step) that is unique to the virus, then that is sufficient to detect it unambiguously.
Given that (for the code segments), the sequence of bytes of the code corresponds with a behavior [1], or partial definition of a behaviour, to have all subsequences match with some other known good software, then all behaviours the virus embodies must match with behaviours present in known good software. Whilst there is the possibility of code in the virus to match with data in some other known good software, I think that the chances of a suitable match are so small as to be unsuitable for use as part of a deliberate strategy [2].
[0] or trojan, worm, spyware or other malware - I shall use just the term virus for simplicity here.
[1] This is less true on architectures with variable length instructions, where by changing the start of a subsequence can totally alter the behaviour it represents.
[2] Unless the malware code is deliberately inserted into the data sections of the known good software. This is almost tautologically impossible.
Just because you didn't get hit doesn't mean no one was firing. :)
You are not the customer.
It's the OS stupid.
This should be a cautionary tale about deploying any M$ products in production environments.
In Capitalist West Anti-Spyware software delete competing product.
In Communist Russia Anti-Spyware software delete your family.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Time to install Microsoft AntiSpyware on all pc's! :D
Kaetemi
M$ vs. Norton? Whoa, I really have no idea who to root for there - I'd actually hope they both lose, because that's the only way the end-user will win. :)
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
This was a full product called Giant Anti-spyware that MS acquired.
"Beta" is their term.
75% of my private client calls involve removing malware, and the MS product
is a champ at this task.
MS antispyware gives you a summary screen that breaks down each item it found,
assigns it a perceived threat rating, and gives you the choice to "Remove, Ignore, Quarantine."
So, anyone watching with any degree of care should notice that Norton was one of the choices
and simply select the "ignore" option.
Personally, I haven't seen this happen myself.
I agree with many other posters that Norton isn't that great of a product.
I've noticed their firewall suddenly,without provocation, start blocking
all websites.
I've also noticed their antivirus turn itself off for no reason, never
to be turned on again. Reinstalling is often interesting, since even the
least little trace of the product prevents an install/reinstall, but it
almost never uninstalls cleanly.
>I switched to Symantec AntiVirus a while ago and...
I just switched.
It also bans mozilla.org as a p0rn/popup site.
If I had to guess I would say that it trips over a Norton Signature file related to whatever ti claims norton to be. This is suported by the fact that it does not remove all of the norton install.
Norton is teh sux0r.
This was only a problem with MS AntiSpyware update 8505. The next update 8507 fixed the issue.
AVG is prefectly fine :P :P
Strangely enough with everything
And its free.
so i ask.... Why use Norton??
And by the way, I have updates, do you want to upgrade me NOW? LATER?
Fuck that!
Give me a medium all-meat topping pizza! Five meat toppings - none of the vegetarian shit for me!
And NO anchovies! NO ANCHOVIES! You put anchovies on that thing and you're in big trouble, dude!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
THis thing Named PC was baby of Gates.
And Microsoft doesn't want any one earn any penny from it.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
Well I may not be a first time Slashdot poster, and I do regularily read what others are say about the posts, but I do have to say after reading most of the comments, I would have to say that this is one of the better Microsoft versus other people arguements that I have seen in a while.
I'm a trusted Microsoft and Symantec fan. I enjoy and use both of their products frequently and rely on them just as much. Microsoft makes a decent operating system. Defiantly not the best one out there, but all slams aside which OS doesn't have their problems? Symantec makes a great product as well. Sure it's a memory hog, but to me, I'd rather take a slower system if it means I have "better" protection. I'm sure I'll get some feedback on that comment.
Here's my only slam, for now. It's viruses, not virii. Virii is not considered a word according to the dictonary. Viruses is. Deal with it.
The link referred to is from BBspot - they are a tech humor website. You can see for yourself by visiting their About page. To quote: "BBspot produces a variety of features like fake news stories satirizing the tech and political worlds"
http://www.bbspot.com/Legal/about.html
I switched from Norton to AVG and it's like I upgraded my CPU I have so much better performance, so I could really care less if both programs delete each other in a steel cage death match. Actually, that would be fun to watch.
Seriously, I don't have a problem with MS deleting Symantec. Whether people want to admit it or not, it's probably an improvement.
I'm sorry but your trolling of Firefox on practically any subject is beginning to annoy me even more the unbiased praise some of its fanboys have.
It's quite simple: Firefox and Opera both = good. IE6 and lesser = bad, whilst IE7 and higher hold the potential to match Firefox and Opera.
Me? I use a custom build of Firefox 1.5.0.1 that only crashes due to plugins going wrong and with 1GB of memory I could care less about how much memory it uses which is hardly suprising considering I have 19 useful extensions installed some of which are known to leak memory.
While Microsoft's software's behavior is obviously faulty, I can't hold Norton completely faultless, either. The degree to which NAV worms its way into the OS is ridiculous, and of course it'd take a lot of effort to undo the result of damaging the install.
OTOH, McAfee is even worse in taking over the OS.
Indeed! Norton's Virus can provide nothing beyond a false sense of security. Since it is the one hackers and crackers expect to encounter, they know just how to take it out. Most viruses also kill it if it hasn't been updated, and the noobs and old people who use Norton's because it is the only one they have heard of don't know you need to update it.
How ya like dat?
A good post on Microsoft anti-spyware in general by one of my favorite security bloggers.
Palm Trees in the San Francisco Bay Area
From the parent comment: "This isn't really a beta issue..."
I agree completely, and for a different reason, also. Microsoft bought their anti-spyware software because it was successful commercial software. There was a lot of publicity that ignored the "beta" designation, including articles in the mainstream media.
This is a case of Microsoft having it both ways: Getting credit for clearing spyware, and avoiding responsibility.
Anyhow, as the parent poster said, this is NOT a failure in the anti-spyware software. It is a failure in the definitions that Microsoft provided. It's amazing to me, but Microsoft didn't test the definitions on a computer with Norton Anti-virus! Microsoft is amazingly sloppy, but this carries Microsoft's habitual sloppiness to a new level.
It's always beta. I'd imagine that each definition file gets some testing, but not the same amount as a new software product.
My thought is that this is the beginning of the usual Microsoft offensive into new territory on their platform. You only have to look back at the way they eliminated DRDOS, back up software, Lotus, Word Perfect, Netscape and other media players to see the pattern. The hapless user sees their favorite program performance degrade and they are soon left fighting Microsoft preference changes or giving in to use the inferior Microsoft program. Other anti-competitive tricks abound as well. Try finding a free beer CD writer with ISO capability. Try the default defrag tool sometime, it takes all night to run and blows up half the time, but resizing a NTFS partition without first doing a defrag is risky. The death of Norton, Symantic and others was announced years ago when Microsoft decided that AV/Security, aka fixing their own bugs, was a profit center. So, I agree, this is not really a beta issue.
Still, this is a good time to compare the Microsoft and free distribution method lifecycles. Debian is a good example of a GNU/Linux distribution and I'll compare that to Microsoft from a user's perspective.
Debian is consistent, easy and the user is well taken care of. Code is selected in the experimental branch, tested in the testing branch and maintained in stable. The experimental branch is as good or better than most commercial software ever is. Testing is usually better and stable is like a rock. In binary form, you can still download older stable distributions, which include thousands of programs to do just about anything you want. While there are many distributions specialized to older and more limited hardware, you can pick up an older release and it will work as well as it ever did. Because of a lack of co-operation by hardware and software vendors, free software has been more difficult to install but once it's there it's stable and never goes away.
In the Windows world, the user is on their own and compatibility issues abound. Windows itself is a minimal distribution of software which does not include even the basics, such as virtual desktops or a spell checker. To get a functional system, you have to go to dozens of vendors. Individual companies write software for various versions of Windows, but it's impossible to tune it to all of them, so performance is hit and miss. Even when things do work, they might not work together, thanks to DLL hell and constant M$ "updates" which never seem to improve the system's 12 minute half life. Much like free software, Microsoft and other companies reuse and improve their code base. Unlike free software, they are unable and unwilling to co-operate. The life cycle there goes something like this:
While you might be able to get a system that works with itself from Dell, keeping it up is a nightmare. If any one of the twelve or so vendors changes things so that they don't wor
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Is MS paying you to increase their *BETA* user numbers?
Do your clients understand you are installing *BETA* software on their computers?
I hope your provide your services for free. Then your clients/victims would at least be paying the right fee for the quality they're getting.
You're darn tootin'. At work we had a hodgepodge of A/V products running. Among them were Norton, McAffee, AVG and Sophos.
Of the four we have decided to standardize on AVG. Why? I told the boss I liked it, that it was light on system resources, and two other members of the group voted it too. So now it will protect our workstations and servers.
Norton and McAffee have become such bloatware that I won't recommend it to anyone. And this machien is running the paid version of AVG. Love it to death. I suffice with the Windows Firewall and I'm Norton free!
How many people run Norton Corp Edition? It is termendiously different that the home edition. I see all this banter about how horriable it is, but if you run the Corp edition, it makes things run smoothly, and in fact, it is just as fast and responsive as other anti-virus programs. The home version, however, is a completely different story. The home edition, is a piece. The Corp Edition is not, and in my opinion is quite usable, works well, is fast and does not degrade performance. Doing the comparision that one poster suggested, running Norton Corp in a VMware VM, verses a non-Norton VM, I noticed no noticable difference.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
First off, good call on "don't use beta in production!"
If the definitions are the problem, I expect the same thing would happen even if the program was not a beta.
I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist... I don't exist
If you don't need a yearly subscription, you probably have the corporate edition, which, for some reason, is far leaner and more polished than the home version.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Well that's not surprising considering NAV runs at least 14 processes. I think it might be 15 including that glorified advertisement they call Norton Protection Center.
We're still selling it at the shop that I work at. I'm not sure why... We recommend AVG Free for most people, but for business users we sell NAV.
This message is misleading, I was prompted to remove norton when I installed one care. They state this is a performance problems, which I can agree with, having two virus protection suites does take a lot of performance out of the computer.
You should sell the business users F-Prot. It also has very cheap volume licensing.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Considering how protective they are of their IP and their EULAs, it suprises the hell out of me they would violate other company's EULAs (adware companies) among other things.
Actually, it's been discused for a while that the stock Microsoft places in things like EULA's compromises the integrity of their anti-spyware app. (It was also suggested that their interest in eventually merging with everybody wasn't so helpful either.)
Finally modding someone offtopic when they rant about what "Begging the Question" means: priceless.
MS software generally is a lot worse than betas from elsehwere or even your average alpha nightly builds.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
It isn't truely beta. It was a product from Giant until M$ bought it. I've been using it on many computers it works quite well.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I have found NOD32 to be a far superior product to Norton and Mcafee (not that it's hard to be a superior product)... extremely low system utilization, I don't even notice it's there, until a virus warning pops up (such as the few email viruses that get past the filters on my mail server).
It also proactively stopped all the common WMF exploits.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
Ever Used NoNAV? I don't know how hard it is to get in the real world but we used it to remove fucked NAV installations all the time when i worked on campus
I had to use SymNRT to uninstall a broken installation of System Works 2003(which worked fine except for the fact that Speed Disk, the utility I tend to use most often out of the entire suite was not installed).
After finishing up, every time I tried to create a new object (folder, text file, etc) or rename something through explorer, the Roxio installer would fire up. I ended up uninstalling EZCD Creator since I don't use it much any more since I upgraded to the latest Nero and things went back to normal.
What MSAS really needs to take out as spyware, or perhaps just useless overhead-wasting junk, is the Norton Protection Center...
H.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
What I want to know is why nobody has mentioned ClamAV. It's got free updates, it doesn't ruin your system like Norton, and unlike all those other antivirus programs, it's GPL!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Seriously, are you advising your customers to run without any antivirus solution in place AT ALL? What is your advice to them on service packs and regular software updates, firewall, etc?
"Safe internet practices" involve all of the above. And that's just for starters.
I'll look into it. None of us are very pleased with NAV 2k6 and it might be a good time for me to put some pressure on to switch to a better solution.
Ok, what's the problem, Norton Antivirus *IS* a MALWARE! You install it on a perfectly working machine and it breaks it. Many times it cannot be uninstalled without running manual uninstall programs or manually removing keys from the registry. When installed it slows the machine by 3 to 5 times, making it unusuable. We repair 150 machines a week, and nearly 1/2 of them have been severally hindered by NAV. Most (80%) of the machines that come in with NAV are infected with viruses, trojans or spyware. We run it on our standalone repair machine as a 2nd antivirus program, and it will break itself about once per week and require us to uninstall and reinstall to get it to work again. On the other hand, I've NEVER had a problem with Microsoft Antispyware, it is definately in the top 3 of spyware cleaners.
You are correct, I should clarify
Yes, I do recommend other antivirus solutions, usually NOD32, but many users are reluctant to remove NAV. This is often because they do not like to feel that they have wasted their subscription fees.
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You're dealing with a booster of Microsoft products, somebody who probably flushed his trustfund on MS "Certification"...he's going to do and say anything to justify wasting money on - and using - Microsoft products.
Of the hundreds of thousands of people reading this, you're probably the only one that thought he was serious and didn't know that the article he linked was a joke.
By the way, I was wondering how long it would be before somebody called me on this.
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As someone who used to sell Norton this comes as no surprise, when my company was upgrading and switched away from Norton to E-Trust Ass. A.V. we had the same issue, however there was a simple fix. I would be surprised if this fix doesn't work for MS A.V. as well as it did for E-Trust. But I'll get to that in a minute. Fact of the matter is anytime you install more than one anti-virus on a computer you risk this problem due to the way A.V. companies code their software, the signatures in their databases are snippets of code that viruses, trojans, ect. use and the A.V. software uses these snippets to recognize the codes. Which subsequently is exactly why they start popping up and screaming about each other as if they were a hostile program. That being said on to the solution. The easiest way to fix the problem with Norton Windows and E-trust (if you had installed e-trust while Norton was installed) was to boot into safe mode, find the Norton root folder in the C directory usually C:\program files\Norton and delete the whole folder. Reboot, after the boot up is complete, go to the recycling bin and restore all of Norton's files, go to add/remove programs, in the control panel and uninstall Norton thus ridding yourself of the ever nasty registry entries and getting rid of Norton so you can use E-trust. Now I have a hard time believing this solution won't work for MS A.V. and if it doesn't its cause MS once again should leave specialized software fields to the specialists because frankly there is no reason for MS A.V. to write to the registry if it detects a virus. If it is there is something else going on entirely. Jack Please note all we have done here is prevented Norton from booting its background scanner and other software thus getting around any active files causing MS A.V. to shit a brick. AND OR causing any I/O conflicts that might have caused the system to freeze on boot-up (a common problem when dealing with E-trust in this situation)
OS X has built in antivirus?
Oh, and I always install Microsoft Anti-Spyware
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If they aren't uninstalling Norton, then I wouldn't call it a correction. It took me almost 2 weeks to get "Norton Security" off my new laptop. If overhead on a system requires more than 5% of 1 CPU or memory, then it is malware. Norton surpased this many versions ago.
This is why programs are released as BETAs!! That way people who want to take risks, live on the edge and know enough that they can repair their systems can try the software out and report any problems. If you are installing a beta it's your responsibility to go do a search and see if there are known bugs that will screw with your computer. Sure alot of us get lazy and don't do this, I know I often don't, but if it them screws up your system in a reasonable way (e.g. they aren't knowingly distributing software that wipes every users HD but just have a bug in their code) you only have yourself to blame.
I certainly have almost no sympathy for any buisness who was installing beta software (for something like this..that wasn't really needed) on anything but a test platform.
Unless I'm just missing an important part of the story, like MS suggested this beta product was safe to run on your buisness computers, this seems to be just the standard stuff one should expect from a BETA. Sometimes they get things wrong.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Malware is a big problem. When I first started working there, I would be sent to troubleshoot, assess, or whatever. I also was responsible for certain projects of my own as I was assigned. Near the end, I was always sent to clean up a nasty malware infection. The clean-ups would go for hours and hours, reboots and reboots (you have to run the thing several times to get all malware, and then install updates, which Automatic Updates were not set). If I didn't have to clean up so much malware, we'd have me do other things.
It's really tempting for a corporation to use whatever malware-cleaner they can. People think M$ is going to know the most about their products so they can make the best antispyware (which is funny, they should make a product that's immune to spyware like Linux or OSX). So companies think, "Let's get M$ antispyware and be done with it!"
I would like to think that all individuals are equally protective of the rights of others, as well as their own. However this is not always the case. Freedom of speech is sometimes the most viciously defended by those who would deny it to others.
What makes you think that corporations, which by design have the selfish instincts of a two-year-old, would even think to look out for the rights of other corp's, except as in it would directly affect their own?
Besides, it was probably not intentional.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Best thing Microsoft ever did!
Considering that Symantec recommended uninstalling Spybot S&D to "protect" Norton Ghost (this after their antivirus gave Spybot a false positive -- you'd think they'd be a bit more careful), I think it's cool they've been hoisted by their own retard...er petard.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
So it now works as an uninstaller too?
Because they can't seem to figure out how to on their own.
Not to mention Symantec support has gone to total hell last year. My favorite was when I called about not being able to removed it or even kill the antivirus process on a server and Symantec support's finaly answer was "I don't know". At that point I have decided Symantec has got to go from my various client sites. I work for an IT company that is a Microsoft reseller and I have always been generally happy about Microsoft's level of support.
This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments.
h ancements"-we-made and a we-haven't-decided-if-we're-going-to-charge-for-it yet beta.
Some things to think about about with this statement...
1) Remember that Microsoft bought someone else's product here. This isn't really a we-just-finished-coding-it beta, it's a we-haven't-worked-all-the-bugs-out-of-all-the-"en
2) The real problem here is lack of quality control on writing definition updates. There is nothing wrong with MS Antispyware itself. It's just some dingbat wrote an update for what's malware that was a little too broad, or didn't have a exception for a leading AV program. This can happen with any program that attempts to define what "malware" is.
3) Beta products will be used when no other alternative exists that the suits like. The idea software is "beta" doesn't really register to them. They see Microsoft released something, and assumed it's a tool they can and should use because a) It's Microsoft, and they wrote Windows, so they are the recognized experts. and b) If it was dangerous to use on our systems, it wouldn't be available for just anyone to download.
4) Why use that logic when we can bash MS again.
Remember when Norton was cool?
Hands down the illest ventriloquist this side of the Mississippi River, Hah!
Yes, we are forced to run McAfee where I work, but I think that is similarly bad. My biggest annoyance I find is when a large ZIP file is downloaded and opened - it scans the ZIP file, and because McShield.exe is running as a high priority process, it bascially pauses the rest of the system for a short moment. I particularly notice this because sometimes the pause is long enough that it starves Winamp from CPU cycles and so causes a momentary pause in play back :-( If you alter the processes priority it eventually notices and puts it's priority to high again - I guess I could make Winamp higher priority, or the rest of the system for that matter, but it doesn't seem like the right solution.
e e.htm
:)
/remove
/Remove=Agent
/LWI /script uninstall.lws
/X{18DE52D4-3BDB-11D4-B836-00508B022A51}
Fortunately there are good uninstall instructions for McAfee here:
http://www.msdwt.k12.in.us/Intra/UninstallingMcAf
I'll reproduce the instructions in this post since they are so short, and save the 'Washington Township's' bandwidth
Uninstalling the ePO Agent v2 (Yellow Guy)
C:\ePOAgent\AGINST32.EXE
Uninstalling the ePO Agent v3 (Shield with Guy)
"C:\Program files\Network Associates\Common Framework\FrmInst.exe"
Uninstalling Thin Client v6
Method 1:
"C:\Program files\McAfee\VirusScan TC\LWI.exe"
Method 2:
MsiExec.exe
Uninstalling Enterprise v7
This can be done through the Add/Remove Software in the control panel
Second, what kind of moron installs that software, sees it tell you that your Norton software has to go, and then follow through with it when you are in a business environment? I just find that to be amazing.
As someone who was hit by this I think I can answer your question. I actually only just now found out that this is was what must have happened. A day or two ago MS AntiSpyware came up from its regularly scheduled nightly scan and told me that I had a spyware password stealing application installed on my system. It didn't say anything like "Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition needs to be removed", it had a name up like Trojan.PasswordThief.MS32 or some such crap.
I was astounded, of course, since I use FF and generally have safe browsing habits. The only thing I could think of was that I got infected via downloading and installing some new shell themes off of deviantart.com. I of course told MS AntiSpyware to go ahead with the removal, I had no reason to suspect that it might be mistaken. Once that had finished I tried to load up Symantec to see if I could scan the archive files I downloaded from deviantart since I suspected they were the culprits, which is when I discovered that Symantec wasn't working. At the time I thought that the spyware killed it in an attempt to stealth itself.
Here's the real kicker: I then went to TrendMicro's Housecall site and did a scan of my system using their Java scanner, since my Symantec was fubar. That too found some remains of a spyware keylogger, which I assumed that MS's product had missed. So it seems that this problem is perhaps more widespread than the article indicates. Perhaps TrendMicro bases some of their definitions off of what MS uses for their AntiSpyware?
/.ers have spared M$oft and seem to be actually applauding their antivirus and bashing NAV. Interesting !
Anyone who bases their life and business on MS products deserves every fuck up and disaster that happens.
Is this type of garbage a surprise to anyone? That's what you get for supporting a shitpile OS all these years, and never demanding more.
You bend over and take Gates' billion dollar hard on and beg for more like the good little geek bitches you are.
I have zero sympathy. I hope another secret rootkit makes the rounds next week. I laughed and aughed and laughed at the Sony one.
Heh heh. Dumbasses. Have fun editing your crapfest registry abomination.
I wouldn't recommend F-Prot for anyone.
I tried the trial version last year and there was a problem with scanning files on my HD.
The time spent on scanning files grew per every scanned file. So while the first few ten thousand files went trough in a few moment even though it did slow down a bit. I left the scan run trough overnight and I was apalled when I looked at the scan status in the morning.
With less than half of all files checked (current file count on my primary HD is more than 240000 files) the scan had slowed to a crawl.
The speed about 1 second per scanned file - and it didn't seem to be related with the file size. That just screams bad coding - probably growing the size of an array of scanned files by 1 after every scan. F-Prop didn't remain on my computer till the end of that day.
While your looking, you might as well look at "Avast" as well. They have a free personal version that has been very fast and effective here.
Throw the bums out!
> What sort of business applications are we talking about? If we're talking
> about serious users, Excel and Access aren't exactly the software that is
> used.
Actually, according to some studies, a large percentage of serious business applications are, in fact, in Excel spreadsheets. The studies in question were not MS propaganda; they were in fact complaining about this as a serious problem. I believe IEEE Computer magazine and Communications of the ACM have both looked at this problem.
I can tell you from first hand experience, Excel spreadsheets are the life and blood of many banks, accounting firms, medical, and other -large- corporations. I have spent a fair amount of time over the last few years helping some of these firms replace these spreadsheets with better applications. Some of this is for Sarbox compliance, some for HIPAA. But even with these changes, a -lot- of serious work is done in Excel.
When Microsoft Anti-Spyware users remove the flagged Norton file as prompted, Symantec's product gets corrupted and no longer protects the user's machine.
And besides, what kind of antivirus system lets some random program delete it's files, causing it to stop protecting the user's machine?
Cripes, even at +2 there isn't a single informative comment in this thread. Bash Microsoft, bash Norton... yadda yadda...
Someone let me know when some useful analysis emerges.
Yah, I know, it's slashdot, but geez folks. The only way this could be more pathetic is if it was a dupe.
Three Squirrels
Yes. It's called "obscurity".
Yes it's called not forcing people to use your products even though they resent them because they have to in order to be able to do business. Apple, like most other companies isn't compelled to do harm to their own customers by locking them into their own products at every turn.
Unsurprisingly companies who don't treat their stakeholders the way Microsoft has don't have armies of disgruntled users forced into using their product every day, and don't have armies of people creating malicious software for that platform.
...till Nortin won't Run.
Good to see the Evil Empire keeps up with its old tricks
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
If it sucks up all the system resources, it does guarantee that viruses have no CPU cycles, so it is technically anti-virus...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Every now and then I just have to ask the Windows people the question that any Free/Open Source Software user would be asking: WHY THE HELL DO YOU PUT UP WITH THIS??? You PAY for this? Are you that into pain, or is it just a humble-before-God thing?
An electron emitted at random from certain radioactive isotopes. Well, you have to admit that it does sound like some Microsoft products.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I use it and like it, but 2MB of RAM is a joke. RTVscan uses 22.5MB, DefWatch uses 1.2MB, VPTray uses 3.8MB, and the update program uses 5MB, at least on mine.
Microsoft just claims it's in 'Beta' so that they can cover up for their mistakes.
This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments.
I rejected Microsoft's "Malicious Software Removal Tool" (MSRT) every Windows Update since it first showed up. After 6-10 times rejecting it, I finally gave in.
I only check for _critical_ updates. Every time I check Windows Update, MS tells me that their latest Software Removal Tool is a _critical_ update.
I didn't go track down the latest leaked beta of Vista or IE7. I didn't beat down the door at MS to get my hands on this. I didn't visit a beta download page out of curiosity. I didn't weasel an invite, like I had to for GMail. Instead, I asked MS for any _critical_ updates to the longest production product in their history. I declined and declined and declined the MSRT. MS forced this down my throat as a _critical_ update to their production OS.
Don't wave the beta flag as some protection against criticism. That slop may be beta quality, but it isn't beta marketed. If you keep pushing it down my throat and I get sick because of it... You very well better hope that all you pay is my doctor bill, and not my lawyer bill.
Begun, the anti-virus wars has!
- unless your business model includes charging for monthly pattern updates.
... knowingly or not, if the software hasn't been blessed already, a request is put in the queue. If it's ok, I can bless it for install or running on that desktop or all of 'em.
i tried using software that recognizes allowed code instead - which is a smaller problem (for population of software used in a single IT context) and takes fewer resources than rt-scanning. it doesn't have to scan executables for patterns. it authenticates software blessed by the admin - me from my desk. if a user tries to install or run something
this means virus code could be installed on the machine, but if it's request doesn't get past authentication, it can only sit there harmless.
it's not in beta either.
http://www.seventhknight.com/
Yeah, I'm certain that all the businesses who claimed to have problems were lying about it. With the same lies. At the same time. Independently.
Uhh, I'm sure if MS tries hard enough *NOTHING* norton does to prevent being deleted will be enough.
Anyway, the reason they went to all this trouble is that a couple of years earlier, someone had released an update that false'd on a Windows DLL. Bear in mind that these updates are pushed out automatically to tens (hundreds, probably) of millions of corporate desktops, not to mention the same defs were used for the consumer product - less take-up of automatic updates in that market, at the time. I said it was a long time ago :) Anyway, the release went out (cos they didn't QA it), and everyone headed for the pub for the regular midweek session "and so to bed." Until the tech support phones started ringing... BOY, were the customers happy to find every desktop nuking itself the next morning...
This, from the same company whose initial file search didn't even look at files from borland (among others). Searching a folder for 'procedure' didn't find any *.pas files - they were ignored.
This was NOT a failure of the Microsoft anti-spyware software, which is working fine in this case. This is a failure to provide a definition file that works correctly.
However, is that an incredibly sloppy failure, or deliberate destruction of a competitor's business?
Microsoft seems to be starting a protection racket that seems to work like this:
(Compare Microsoft Windows XP with OpenBSD, which is equally complicated. Quote from OpenBSD: "Code often gets audited multiple times, and by multiple people with different auditing skills." The OpenBSD team is number one because they want to be.)
Profit Now: A protection racket would be even more profitable. Microsoft would collect money every year for a subscription to its protection updates.
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. taxpayers pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
I agree. I am a computer services provider for mostly home users and I often find NAV and internet tools to be single greatest contributor to draining system resources. I usually recommend disabling NAV, using safe internet practices, and scanning weekly or if there appears to be a problem.
Oh yeah, but I've yet to find any antivirus software which doesn't do this.
I have also found that attempting to educate users about safe Internet practices is futile at best. I do, quite literally, have my father as the perfect example; despite many government-sponsored training courses, he still doesn't actually know the difference between two windows. "Dad, a window is an area on the screen which belongs to a program. The idea of a window is that it lets you do several things at once. Choose a window by pointing at its title bar - right there - and clicking on it. You can have several windows open at once, allowing you to choose your task as quickly as you can reach for the mouse."
So, what do I get from other, more advanced, users?
"Use FireFox instead of IE." - "You're just being alarmist, Internet Explorer can't be that bad."
"Don't open executables, especially if they're from strangers." - "My friend sent me trojan.scr, so I opened it."
"Don't open Word, Excel or PowerPoint files which didn't originate on your computer." - "All of my spreadsheets stopped working and one of them tried to dial a 1-900 number!"
Microsoft's support forum is quickly filling up with complaints about this problem, ma...Having had to use and support enough Microsoft crap over the years, I consider it to be suspicious that there's a "problem" appearing after Microsoft introduces a competing product.
Although I am sure that Microsoft's anti-virus/anti-spyware uses less CPU and memory, what with all the undocumented Windows features which were mysteriously used in their software.
Bastards. I hope Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, all employees and all shareholders of that company contract inoperable colorectal cancer.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
An os that is full of holes, and we are going to trust microsoft to clean "spyware" to? whats next, MS antivirus?
Norton Antivirus has been the most annoying damn bit of software I've ever had to remove ever. It's "helpfully" preinstalled on many machines, but after the 'free' subscription expires after a year or whatever, it manages to screw with windows at random.
... and many more ... ... then unplug the machine and take off NAV/Spybot/umpteen other 'helpful' software, and install avg, adaware, m$anti spyware; reconnect to the internet after an initial scan... then update everything, and try to kill off any remaining spyware
Yup the firewall prevents internet access, and other oddities. Of course with an expired subscription the user still thinks they're still proof against malware and that they're firewalled.
Parents machine; Norton removal hoses networking completely, and I need to reinstall the network adaptor to get networking to work!
Customers machine; Random 'internet access' and 'cd writing' problems
Customers machine; Doesn't uninstall properly, interferes with Vodafone and Orange Data card installation, use a combination of regedits, the symantec removal tool and add/remove programs to get the machine into a state I can reinstall the corp edition
First thing I do is download firefox, avg free, m$ anti spyware and adaware
The only thing I cant seem to get rid of is a certain young ladies "VX2 / Nail / Aurora" spyware nonsense, any help on that front is appriciated, as the only thing I can think of doing is a reinstall!
He has a valid point.
Small wonder why Grisoft has done very well with their excellent AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition. The current Version 7.1.375 is fast, powerful and consumes little system resources. (big thumbs up)
It was probably flagged as being competition.
I hate sigs.
I urge Norton to rewrite their program to detect the M$ malware and deload it before it gets deloaded.
Then, we have come to the point of Silicon Nirvanah, where two culture-clashed greed-crazed programs compete for the attention of schizophrenic processors.
Thank God Intel and AMD are comming out with multiple processors. That way we can let one or two or three fight with each other so that we can use the other one for the purposes one might want to put a computer for.
Better yet, let the race for n-order processors begin as everyone writes software that removes all others from memory space. After all if religous zealotry and greed are to complete their perversion of our government and our lives, why let any problem go uncreated?
I think this is more likely a stupid mistake than an insidious attempt to remove software. MS has a reputation writing crappy code and for not testing it properly before selling it. This is probably just the latest ramification of that problem.
I see lots of NAV bashing, but I've heard that older versions were okay. I have NAV 2002 and it has 2 processes running taking about 8 MB of memory. This doesn't seem like the beast everyone here is describing. Am I missing something?
It's not going to get better.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
...stop trying to find a siver bullet for all their protection. I have yet to run across any "security suite" that hasn't caused some kind of issue. Whether it's from components just blowing chunks or being too confusing for Joe Sixpack to configure properly. I feel the same way about the "all in one" printer/fax/scanner/copier/fix-your-coffee-in-the- morning POSs all the printer companies are pushing on customers. It's been my experience that any product that tries to do many things ends up doing none of them well.
We recommend AVG Free for most people, but for business users we sell NAV.
AVG is an excellent product. I have been using it for a couple of weeks now with zero problems, minimal performance/CPU/RAM impact, etc. I am so impressed with it that I am actually going to pay for it, despite the free version working "good enough" for me.
At work, NAV sucks my computer dry. Sure, it works well enough, but the cure is worse than the disease. Too bad my employer is in bed with MS and Norton, no room for AVG...
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Sounds like Deja Vu...
1 39719304/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-5567178-79712 61?s=books&v=glance&n=283155)
First, read Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire
(or for a quick peek, see http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887306292/qid=1
Now, fast forward to today...
In the early 2000's, Microsoft's Anti-Spyware lost out to Norton Anti-Virus in the marketplace. According to one Microsoft programmer, a few of the key people working on MS Anti-Spyware had a saying at the time that "Anti-Spyware isn't done until Norton won't run." They managed to code a few hidden bugs into MS Anti-Spyware that identified Norton as Spyware. Users would then remove parts of Norton unknowningly, causing Norton to breakdown when their PC was restarted. "There were as few as three or four people who knew this was being done," the employee said. He felt the highly competitive Gates was the ringleader.
I'm not sure how Microsoft AntiSpyware does everything since Ad-Aware and Spybot seem to work fine for me, but I bet that some of those "idiots" you're referring to are probably the same ones who see "Windows" listed as spyware in Ad-Aware.
What I'm trying to say is that some stuff out there masquerades as other things. Am I to leave that "Windows" spyware program just cause it says "Windows" on it? Fuck no. Now, the really intellegent person would check to see where this "spyware" resides. That's where you can say those people are dumb or not.
Remember kids, if something "well-known and (semi-)trusted" shows up in your list of spyware when you run a scan, please check the location of it. If it's in a location you know to be wrong, then remove it. Otherwise, have fun paying the price for hosing a program or two.
"Undocumented API"
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Malware has traditionally been indentifed by sequences of bytes; Malware removal software datafiles contain those sequences to search for and remove.
Usually, the Anti-Malware software is intelligent enough not to scan it's own datafiles, except for a CRC/Signature check or such.
However, it's always been considered a bad idea to run multiple virus-scanners at once (at least since the 1980's I think) as they can end up detecting each other's data file or recursively scanning each others output.
It's like going to multiple doctors, getting multiple prescriptions, and taking an overdose for the same condition.
Don't blame the doctors (Microsoft, Norton), blame the prople who release malware in the first place.
(And don't call Windows Malware, Mal- indicates evil intent; it's more like 'Misware')
What freedoms do you really have with Firefox? No, seriously. Think about it for a minute.
Do you really think you'd be able to modify the code in an practical way? Take a peek at the Firefox and Mozilla codebases. They're of a terrible quality, and an unnecessary level of complexity in many cases. Sure, you have the freedom to mess with the code, but you'd likely be doing that because of a problem you've encountered. By the time you're comfortable enough with the code to make changes, you've already wasted a lot of time. Of course, there's a very small chance that your modification will even be accepted by the Firefox developers. Opera, on the other hand, just tends to work.
You could also create a branch of Firefox, if you saw fit. But then you run into the problems above, in addition to putting forth the effort towards maintaining your distribution.
So in the end, the "freedoms" you get by using Firefox are quite minimal. The minor benefits far outweighed by the massive hassles associated with trying to actually do anything with those "freedoms". Not only that, but the freedoms necessary with Firefox (due to its poor quality) are not necessary with Opera, because it just works.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
"This should be a cautionary tale..."
Well, yes, it should be but it seems certain folks just won't take a clue even when it whacks them hard upside the wallet.
Microsoft OS has been a battle ground for many years now. It is continous trouble in many, many ways and the expense is outrageous (why else do you think Microsoft runs all those TCO and TOC ads -- they're trying to counter the reality with PR and BS, duh.)
Bottom line: You've made your bed, now lie in it. If you don't like the bedding, replace it with something more functional and less trouble. That your company has this problem is your company's fault: It's way too late in the game to be placing blame elsewhere. Even people who live in caves in little countries on other planets know Microsoft's OS is crap.
But you don't want to hear that and so you'll keep taking it in the ass from all directions. You Microsoft-slave-bitches cry and whine like helpless little girls when the solution is obvious but you just don't want to do it. I have no sympathy for you or your company. True justice here would be for you business competitors to quietly move off MS and wipe your sorry butts right out of the market.
Truely pathetic that you come _here_ to cry about Microsoft OS problems and to look for someone to give you an easy solution, especially since you refuse to accept the exceptionally obvious answer.
DUH!
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Ah yes, of course. Windows would be much better if it's hive of settings and preferences was read-only. How useful! Oh, and storing user settings in a single place which is easy to copy, export, and update is incredibly bad. Bad!
I'm not interested in joining the flamefest. I've used and maintained Unix, Windows, and Linux, and have a slight preference for Linux.
But the thing I love to hate is the Windows registry, as implemented in WinXP. Because many, many apps have to store settings in the registry, it becomes impossible to have users be able to run their apps without giving them elevated privileges. This one fact alone contributes to a heckuva lot of security problems. It would have been much nicer to have individual .ini files for apps within each user's account, and then (if you like) a single utility to "copy, export, and update" them.
Just my $0.02.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
Microsoft: "It's always beta."
Just check Google:
Results 1 - 10 of about 10,100 for "norton sucks".
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,420 for "do not recommend norton".
Results 1 - 10 of about 17,800 for "recommend norton" (don't forget to subtract the "do not..." from the number.
Results 1 - 10 of about 7,050 for "recommend AVG free edition".
Your search - "do not recommend AVG free edition" - did not match any documents.
Your search - "AVG free edition sucks" - did not match any documents.
You obviously didn't read my posts.
I'm not supporting NAV, nor AVG, nor the use of anti-virus software at all. In fact, I'm not supporting the use of Windows.
The best solution is to use software like OpenBSD or Solaris, which offers a far greater degree of security. Not only that, but it avoids all of the problems associated with the Windows anti-virus software.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
For businesses that can setup a central A/V server, the Symantec A/V (not Norton) does a good job. It's almost fire-n-forget. Biggest problem we had with v7/v8 was that if you retired a server, the clients wouldn't automatically update from another server in the group.
Wow.
Now I know why some posters put [sarcasm] tags in their comments.
Just for the record, the above sentence is sarcasm too.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Not to mention the anti-trust angle on this....
emt 377 emt 4
It is not a bug, it is a feature. It just happens that this feature actually helps a computer.
\
Precedent? Interesting how you immediately jumped on Firefox and didn't consider any other possible causes, of which there are many, such as spyware inserted as a layer between the system and TCP/IP.
Why didn't you tell the original poster to just try the page with Internet Explorer? I mean, their system is otherwise clean, and while I too would hesitate to get them to open a suspicious site with it, they could simply crank the security to full and be equally protected, assuming they had all their patches.
Sounds like you had a solution waiting for a problem, and this one didn't quite fit but you threw it in anyway.
To the original poster: What are the sites showing this issue? It might be that they are actually using Unicode characters that your system isn't setup to recognize. In any case, try reinstalling Firefox. If that doesn't resolve the issue, try reinstalling TCP/IP; try the easy way first, and if that doesn't fix the issue, try the harder way. Being that you're running AOL, you will probably have to reinstall that as well for both of these methods, as it sometimes uses its own drivers.
PS: You should post messages requesting help in a forum appropriate for them. Slashdot is not a good place to request support, usually (as evidenced by your 100% Off Topic moderation). Check out Experts Exchange for one such forum, though you may have to pay for the points to ask questions. You should also take a look at How to Ask Questions the Smart Way by ESR, as posting questions on the internet (esp. to volunteers) is somewhat different from calling technical support.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Here, here!
Or: Hear, Hear!
I thought I was going to be one of the few saying
that Norton has becomhe a resource hogging, error generating,
load of cr*p, that is a security risk all by itself.
But I see the thread hardly contains anything else...
I currently recommend de-installing it any chance I get.
Auto-update and good e-mail usage instructions are better.
From first hand experience, after convincing my father recently to retract the advice of my brother to use Microsoft Anti-Virus, which downloaded 174 Viruses, Spywares, even a third party program that downloaded more baddies in exchange for any personal information. MAV even allowed one of these programs to modify the registry letting in a Trojan Horse virus which changed the wallpaper to something that disabled most of the control settings. It wasn't until I got Norton Internet Security that I discovered all this information.
Microsoft Anti-Virus only looks out for itself and does not protect your computer.
Do not use Microsoft Anti-Virus!
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
The simple fact that semi-major companies are capitulating with this BS FUD tactics should show that major companies supporting hardware/software standards should NOT program with MS network stacks. It's FAR too obvious that they're trying to get ahold of the network/internet, then make it so that nobody can have a standard webpage... Otherwqise, my own homepage, which directly links to microsoft, would not be affected if I had not turned everything off.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That's quite witty, pretty funny...good for you.
Should Microsoft even be allowed to charge for fixing a problem that is caused all due to their poor product security ? What is to stop them from actually WEAKENING the security on the products in order to sell their anti-virus product better ? If anything was to be considered a monopolistic abuse, this is it.
To put it another way,how could a free software be so good [ no pun intended],when there are only other pay antivirus s/w's?
I used to think before ,since AVG was free, they wouldnt be updating the virus definitions as fast as Norton/McAfee etc....
Iam surprsed AVG has earned such a great reputation among the geek crowd!
Why does yahoo do this
Is that supposed to be a joke?
Why does yahoo do this
Sometimes it does.
One of my clients had MASSIVE issues with it gobbling all available memory and swap. Seriously. 2.8Ghz P4 systems with 512MB of RAM running like slideshows.
http://charles.borner.us/Pegged.JPG
Here's a screenie of the process monitor from one of those machines. Notice the Commit Charge. 1.9GB at the moment. Max was 2.4GB. And what's eating the most memory?
rtvscan (Symantec Antivirus) with 871MB (at the moment). It was actually giving memory back, so it wasn't a stupid little issue of a memory leak...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
> This should be a cautionary tale about
> deploying beta products in production environments."
Actually, this is a lot funnier. It's a cautionary tale about Microsoft gobbling up the market leader and turning the product into an unreliable beta.
This is of course actually an old tale for anyone who knows anything about how Microsoft and any monopoly or near-monopoly treats its own and competitors' products. It's amazing that consumers still don't complain about the complete passiveness of consumer protection agencies in computer matters in all countries, even those that claim to be better than the rest.
Every system I install "new out of the box" gets the following:
All software installed as "value add" gets un-done, with the exception of the CD Burning software. That includes MusicMatch, Dell software (dell support, dell media center, etc), any Light version of any software, and the photo editing software that sucks so bad.
Then I run EasyCleaner (ToniArts) and clean the puppy up.
Install F-Prot and turn on the Windows firewall (unless, of course, the PC is on a LAN with a firewall).
Marvel at the fast new machine.
Scream in horror that the user can't find the big blue "E" for Internet (even though there's an orange icon that says "INTERNET".
= Grow a brain...
We're talking about replacing software that sucks with software from Microsoft that sucks slightly less..
Firefox doesn't suck. RealOne sucks. So you could replace RealOne with Windows Media Player and have software that sucks slightly less.
See?
Would not recommend AVG free, its been a consistant low performer as to viruss found for many years.
:)
If price is the pinch try Avast!
If you have $30AU ($18US) get trend pccillin oem bundle, can usually track em down fairly easy, it does use some resources (mainly ram) but actually gets most of the baddies.
Of course if you want good protection and low resources get kaspersky
...
That and it is free and works properly. I hate the fact that you would pay for Norton, then every year after you have to pay them for definition updates, and then pay even more if you want to get it to work properly.
A couple of years ago,I was running NAV & firewall and I went on to their website to check my defences (naturally assuming that because I was using their software I would be fine) and found that I had several ports open. Nortons advice was "to get a firewall", as I was using theirs I was pretty angry.
I am relatively IT literate, but could not get the firewall to fully protect me, going onto Norton's website was no help either, there didn't seem to be any instructions on how to close ports. And they wanted me to pay for support. I even tried to uninstall and re-install, but somehow it remembered all of its settings (so obviously wasn't unistalling completely).
But I was stupid back then and forgot about it for a few weeks. Suddenly I found that I could hardly get on the net (broadband) and when I did I couldn't do anything. After a while, I had tried everything else, I turned off my firewall and found that the net worked fine, Norton was now protecting the Net from me. I installed Zonealarm, Ad-aware & AVG on the advice of a paranoid friend. And I was amazed that my PC actuallly ran much faster (and that was one of the benefits I wasn't aware of, so it wasn't simply auto-suggestion).
I just wish my work would get rid of McAfee (which I used before Norton and it was even worse), I hate the point at which suddenly without any warning, my PC hangs for a few minutes bacause the definitions are updating.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
I haven't had anything get past AVG free in over five years.
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted, then used against you.
From TFA, it's apparently deleting registry entries, not the files. Another advantage of the monolithic Windows registry; anything can fuck up anything else.
I wish I had moderation points. That is interesting ... very interesting. What I read made it sound like it told you what bad stuff was running.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Microsoft, a company notorious for bloatware, does something to speed up users' computers.
I remember a student-project at our anti-virus test lab that ran corporate/enterprise editions for all products they tested.
Norton took 6 days to scan a heap of files other scanners managed to process in 3 hours.
Sorry but i've cleaned dozens of PC`s 'protected' with AVG and it is totally inadequate for protecting most users. Norton does seem to fare a little better though it is a resource hog. I always install NOD32 unless the customer is too tight to pay for it.
People who are careful and use Firefox instead of IE might be OK with AVG but its poor detection and heuristic scanners make it a bad choice for most people. If it was not free, I`m sure it would not receive half as much positive press.
Do a bit of research on detection and removal rates at the various antivirus testing houses you will see AVG generally scores quite low.
OS X has built in antivirus?
Yeah, it's called sensible user permissions. If you could run most apps in non admin and set up the file permissions properly, you'd eliminate a lot of viruses as a side effect. OSX does most of this by default.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I'm trying to decide which is worse - this being modded troll or the parent being modded insightful.
Tough call.
"If you could run most apps in non admin and set up the file permissions properly, you'd eliminate a lot of viruses as a side effect."
This assumes that if an OS like OSX was relevant, virus writers would write viruses for it that assumed admin/root permissions. Malware doesn't *need* root/admin permissions to carry our their primary tasks.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Um...
I recently just removed the Home edition (it was a 2002), and installed the Corp edition. It didn't have any noticible change. It may have been the amount of RAM I have - 1GB, but strangely neither Norton Corp or Home drained as much resources as the service installed and auto-started on boot by Matlab. After I removed Matlab, it was so much faster.
If you guys are comparing performance in a low RAM situation - I defined this at 256MB for Win2k or above because Windows doesn't really run that well below that - then I might agree with you. But I have been using NAV Home for a long time, and sometimes I try to disable it to see if a CPU intensive game would run faster, and it made no difference.
Once it was "homo homini lupus".
Today it is "antivirus antiviri virus".
So, what is the dominant species on the planet?
Oh, and I always install Microsoft Anti-Spyware
I hope that is sarcasm...for me it is Spybot, Adaware, and if
that doesn't get it done then HijackThis! and a some kill process tools .
A little regedt32 and msconfig as well, and shutting off the damn system restore .
It is friggin amazing how much crap now hides itself in windows pre-fetch and system restore .
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I am sure that Microsoft's anti-virus/anti-spyware uses less CPU and memory, what with all the undocumented Windows features which were mysteriously used in their software.
Did you forget? They were ordered to document all the undocumented APIs they'd been using, and they did just that.
There are some really useful things in there. I don't know how I ever managed to write a decent Windows program before I had access to PathYetAnotherMakeUniqueName().
For the home-users I support I always install AVG-free, great package. The only disadvantage is the updater for winme/win98 stations, having to download a 2 MB updatefile a couple of times a week is a pain in the ass for people with a 56k modem. At some offices I use f-prot. Hardly any recources and I didn't have a slip-through up till now. Mcaffeee, Norton and Sophos were all memory-hoggs is my experience...
There was a discussion on Slashdot about this, and someone mentioned that the OpenBSD team audits both the OS and the applications delivered with the OS. So, OpenBSD is equally complicated. I'm not able to find the information about this on the OpenBSD web site at present.
It depends on what your standard is. I have NAV on my own computer, and regard it as far, far better than the IT-department installation of McAfee on my work computer.
Granted, the two hardware configurations are quite different, and probably the software configuration as well; but the latter is enough to keep anyone unfortunate enough to have to work with in a state of permanent rage.
I think McAfee needs to be regarded as a serious health & safety risk -- high blood pressure, teeth gnashing, and all that.
Thank you, Microsoft!
Finally a good removal tool for Norton thank you Microsoft!
Anyone know when Windows Server 2003 is going to be out of Beta and ready for production work?
You use Norton at the office? It's corporate sibling, Symantec AntiVirus, runs far lighter and has much better deployment tools. While far from perfect (I have a list), it is much better than the home user oriented NAV.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Pray tell, good sir, are you alway this extraordinarily stupid, or are you feeling especially smart today?
...is MS Antispyware going to attempt to remove iTunes and Quicktime?
Karma Schmarma
It isn't "some random program", it is a Microsoft program, with free access to all the undocumented APIs in Windows - I'm sure that Microsoft left themselves loopholes all over the place. In fact I suspect that the majority of Windows security problems were deliberately put there to act as backdoor for Microsoft to do something like this.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Agreed. At work, we switched to McAfee. It appears to be marginally better, but I have been toying with creating a support message to facetiously ask for a second laptop under the explanation that my primary laptop is already fully allocated to other "colleagues". The virus scanner, spyware scanners, system inventory scanner, software firewall, and mobile backup solution have conspired to use most of my system resources nearly 100% of the time.
Having had to use and support enough Microsoft crap over the years, I consider it to be suspicious that there's a "problem" appearing after Microsoft introduces a competing product.
While I'm sure Microsoft would jump at any chance to trounce on its competitors in any borderline illegal way it can think of, I think this is more or less a case of improper testing on their part -- another typical Microsoft problem. It would be counterproductive to intentionally disable a competing product in the beta version. It would be much smarter to introduce this "feature" in the final version.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Well, this 'anti-spyware' program once reported my Firefox as a browser hijacker program (one that maliciously changes default browser), and offered removal of it. I'm not entirely sure this is a failure. These failures seem statistically beneficial to M$.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I'm surprised no one mentioned it before.
PM
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
"Yes it's called not forcing people to use your products even though they resent them because they have to in order to be able to do business. Apple, like most other companies isn't compelled to do harm to their own customers by locking them into their own products at every turn."
Why is it that Apple keeps their hardware closed from everyone then? Apple do use vendor lock in all the time: the iPod/iTunes is a prime example. They'd locked their customers in at every step of the way. You clearly are spouting shit, and have no idea what you are talking about. Back in the day, Apple was more closed than Windows/IBMPC, which is the main reason Wintel is king today.
I installed Zonealarm, Ad-aware & AVG on the advice of a paranoid friend. And I was amazed that my PC actuallly ran much faster (and that was one of the benefits I wasn't aware of, so it wasn't simply auto-suggestion).
That is the EXACT configuration I got on my home computer running Windows XP Professional (SP2) with all security patches installed. I also have the Yahoo! Toolbar running in Internet Explorer; Yahoo! Toolbar includes an excellent spyware detection and removal program that I use in concert with Ad-Aware SE 1.06R1 to stamp out spyware. (thumbs up)
I wholeheartedly agree, "what problem" Norton is like a cycle sucking piece of spyware, if MS Anti-Spyware Beta can get it off and clear all the clutter it deposits all over a system I would use it in preference to the Add/Remove programs applet.
I never understand why NAV and Norton Internet Security get such good writeups in the PC mags, I have had to forcibly remove it from a good number of my customer's PCs as it has a) sapped resources and b) often caused BSODs or c) interfered with some other key application that they need and it is blocking it.
I have noticed even when you are opening a plain MS Excel spreadsheet it has got its hooks into Excel and is doing some kind of scan before opening, so after NAV goes on all your office documents take days to open.
I remove NAV or NIS completely and put McAfee VirusScan on and either Sunbelt Counterspy or MS Antispyware, those two and a good NAT router seem to keep most systems running smoothly without too much overhead and overt interference.
Norton Antivirus and Norton Internet Security are just bloatware and overkill. I think if MS can come up with a good alternative that covers antivirus and spyware in one package they might have a winner on their hands.
I wish all the AV companies would keep it simple and fast with low overhead. Even though I like McAfee VirusScan I hate their spam killer it seriously f**ks up your email.
Martley, Near Worcester UK.
No, and biological disease doesn't need poor hygiene, sharing of used needles by intravenous drug users, or unprotected sex with multiple partners in order to propagate, either.
The reason default-admin access under Windows is the norm is not that it's irrelevant to security. The reason that other OS'es -- which don't provide admin access by default -- are more secure is not coincidence.
If Microsoft took steps to minimize routine use of admin access, it would take away a hugely useful tool for malware authors. Sure, they'd try to pursue other avenues, but their task would be considerably more difficult. Microsoft has not made this change not because it wouldn't be effective, but because it's hamstrung by all the widely-assumed precedents dating back to times when the company took security even less seriously than it does today.
[quote]...which, for some reason...[/quote]
Profit? Larger companies and their licencing probably make a lot more money for them than the home licences do.
A lot of the home installations they have are probably due to preinstallation and bundling, where the user doesn't realize how much slower it's making their system, because they only have experience with it installed and running. So, why bother making it leaner? It's just going to cost more.
However, the corporate users generally have IT guys who have somewhat of an idea of how much these programs use and how it slows the systems, so they're likely less tolerant and more willing to pay a bit extra to have these problems addressed.
In the end, it's about profit.
I did a 300 pc install of avg and in 3 weeks avg blew its self out. every PC had to be reconfigured by hand as the remote install didnt work and the update engine kept pointing to a imaginary internal server and the fallback internet updates would not take.
phoned company and they are like too bad.
AVG may run fast, but I've found that its not quite as good as other (non-free) products at catching viruses
Virus Bulletin (BugMeNot Required) does tests of about 30 different antivirus programmes on various versions of windows from NT4 to Server 2003.
They set up computers with the various AV software, and infect the computers with currently common viruses and see which ones catch them. The resuls of 44 of these tests since 1998 for some of the major AV programmes are as follows;
Passed/Failed/NA
Symantec 30/7/7
McAfee 24/18/2
F-Secure 21/12/11
AVG 11/21/12
and the one that I used to use when I ran windows (partly as a result of these tests)
Eset passed 36, failed 3, 5 N/A
AVG is improving, but it still fails these tests periodicly. A few years ago, I would have called recommending AVG downright irresponsible, it had only passed 1 out of 20 tests by Feb 2003
and that linux, unix, os/x, etc etc etc is the solution.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
But even with these changes, a -lot- of serious work is done in Excel.
AOL. I actually turned down a job with a small company when the MD told me how proud he was that he'd been able to make his spreadsheets much more sophisticated by inter-linking cells between files.
I just had this vision of a great big house-of-cards in Excel form, and one card being moved....
We used to do the same, then we just started using AVG Pro for businesses. Problem is, Symantec has a much more thorough virus database, and AVG's detection rate just isn't there for me. Nod32 has been the answer to all my problems.
Emory: Uh..we're still..beta testing that.
Oglethorpe: What you're testing is me and my patience!
I thought this thread was about Microsoft software improperly labeling their competition's product? It's becoming an ad for AVG.
I think I'll stick with Norton and avoid Microsoft's program. I run multimedia applications and have no performance problems. (Thankfully those applications didn't come from Microsoft either.)
http://www.nod32.com/ is what you're looking for.
Having had to use and support enough Microsoft crap over the years, I consider it to be suspicious that there's a "problem" appearing after Microsoft introduces a competing product.
Although I am sure that Microsoft's anti-virus/anti-spyware uses less CPU and memory, what with all the undocumented Windows features which were mysteriously used in their software.
I was with you till you said this, which clearly shows you've never used it. It was originally Giant anti-spyware, Microsoft bought it. Microsoft antispyware is a very good product, and usually the one I use last in a scan to clean up what the others missed. It is however very sluggish, and asks the user too many questions that they don't know how to answer, with a big 'ACCEPT' or 'BLOCK' button underneath.
Guess which one they always press?
Their anti-virus is Kaspersky, because they bought that too. Kaspersky is the only antivirus besides Nod I would use, but Nod is faster I think and also still independently owned.
Emory: Uh..we're still..beta testing that.
Oglethorpe: What you're testing is me and my patience!
Most systems I use won't let you set up an email relay as anything less than a root user. But that's just what I've observed...
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
And no fucking SKINZ !!!
#6495ED - cornflower blue
Because many, many apps have to store settings in the registry, it becomes impossible to have users be able to run their apps without giving them elevated privileges.
No, that's a result of all the apps that write to HKLM, which requires admin privs to update. Never underestimate the power of stupid programmers.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Only that the poor reputation of the consumer version tarnishs the image of the corperate version.
Well, for the sheer fact that it's quite obnoxious and difficult to remove Norton Anti-Virus at times and you need special software to do so, I say this could be a good thing. But on the bad side, I smell a lawsuit...
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
1) Microsoft announces their own anti-virus product. ...
2) Microsoft anti-spyware flags competitors' products as harmful
3)
4) Profit!
"The reason that other OS'es -- which don't provide admin access by default -- are more secure is not coincidence.
Of course not. They are secure because nobody uses them.
"If Microsoft took steps to minimize routine use of admin access, it would take away a hugely useful tool for malware authors."
Vista will do this....and it won't stop malware. In fact, I doubt if it will even slow it down.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
But how would it get the poor reputation if the majority of its users are unaware of how poor it performs? It's not like they would have ready access to the corporate edition to compare it to.
So why not sell AVG Pro, Trend Micro, Nod32, or any of the hundreds of other AVs that are as good or better as norton at detection, and don't drain so many system resources?
Also have a look at E-SET NOD32. They've actually got heuristics working properly., the window between virus release, vendor awareness followed by vendor update isn't fast enough these days and NOD32 seems to trump them all with their effective heuristics.
Last week whilst selecting a replacement anti-virus for our existing Symantec Corporate installation, I was lucky enough to receive a virus sample by e-mail (to an otherwise unfiltered mailbox). I received this virus at 18:05, Kaspersky first became aware of the viruses existance at around 21:00, followed by an update at 23:00. Similar stories or worse with Symantec, Trend, F-Prot, ClamAV and various other well known scanners. NOD32 however spotted the virus "blocked looks like xyz submitting sample for further analysis" at 18:05.
Don't ignore this update window, which really isn't working out to well these days.
In addition NOD-32 is really quick, low on resources and has really good anti-spyware detection using the same technology.
You will not be disappointed!
Jason.
Im In the money
I have
Symantec Antivirus Corporate and Microsoft Antispyware
running side by side on two machines.
To date I have had no problems... and did not experience the described behavior.
My guess is that I must have my auto-update scheduled later than those folks and didn't get my updates till it was fixed.
Except that I have a program using only documented APIs designed to completely destroy any executable while it is running.
As a test, I installed Norton SystemWorks 2005 on a Windows 98 computer with 128 MB of ram. It bogged the machine down, and I had to uninstall it. Later went with AVG.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
You're living in a dream world.
"You're living in a dream world."
My 'dreamworld' doesn't involve least priviledge magically stopping ignorant users from introducing hostile code into their systems.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Apple, like most other companies isn't compelled to do harm to their own customers by locking them into their own products at every turn.
.mov format? Or iPod and iTunes? Or their one-button mice? Or the nonstandard MPEG file extensions? Or their photocasting feeds that violate the RSS specifications? Or how they only support Mac OS on hardware that they supply? Or 90% of everything else that Apple has ever produced?
Oh, you mean like QuickTime and the
All that eating sounds like a lot of work. I prefer to relax with my good pal anorexia. The carefree life is so easy when you don't have to worry about eating.
/* Only that the poor reputation of the consumer version tarnishs the image of the corperate version.*/
Not necessarily. After all, Trend Micro, which doesn't have much of a name among the home antivirus market has a fairly large presence on the corporate side.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Avast? Hah! Go get yourself NOD32. This sucker came outa nowhere and freaking rocks for the same price.
In addition NOD-32 is really quick, low on resources and has really good anti-spyware detection using the same technology.
I'm usually aware of it when I'm running anti-spyware software -- I don't need NOD-32 to tell me. ;)
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
Beta? Call me an cynical old fart, but I bet this was planned and designed that way. Best way to eliminate the opposition. Norton might not be that great, but that their tagging should be a mistake, that I don't belive for a second.
2Mb really ??
On my office computer, Symantec antivirus uses 7 processes :
- VPTray 3376 Kb
- RTVscan 19680 Kb
- DefWatch 580 Kb
- ccSetMgr 3732 Kb
- ccEvtMgr 3888 Kb
- ccApp 4400 Kb
- SAVRoam 1440 Kb
That's a 37 Mb in RAM.
Do seat belts and air bags stop ignorant drivers from killing themselves in car accidents?
Do firewalls and sprinkler systems stop innocent people from dying in fires?
I strongly disagree with your statement of how badly NAV runs. I've used Norton AV since 2001 on my home and work systems (work required it, so I purchased it for my home use). NAV has run on old Pentium II/III chips running 128 MB of ram with no issues or poor performance. It doesnt hog memory (24MB being used in my process list, this does not qualify as a hog) and it never hogs CPU cycles except when it runs a virus scan (even then I set the CPU priority to high).
I've never used AVG/Adaware etc so I can't say NAV is a better solution than those two combined, but I can say that NAV (not the norton internet security suite) is a good AV product and I would promote using it.
"There are thousands of different applications out there, and Microsoft can't test all of them."
At one time, I understand, and possibly now, Microsoft owned perhaps 10% of Symantec, makers of Norton anti-virus. Microsoft executives own, or owned, more of Symantec stock.
There are fewer than 10 anti-virus applications in common use. Symantec has a huge history of making software that has bugs or causes some grief in other ways. Symantec software should definitely be tested with everything, because of its miserable history.
Symantec and Microsoft are very similar in that they both release sloppy software, in my opinion. Talking on the telephone with Symantec technical support in the past had the same abusive quality as talking with Microsoft technical support, suggesting to me that Symantec copied Microsoft's methods, and that Symantec was connected socially to Microsoft.
(Now, in my experience, Symantec is more abusive than Microsoft. Symantec employees seem to me to have a habit of reducing their workload by annoying customers, so that customers don't call again.)
The fact that Microsoft didn't check a definitions update with NAV is either an indication that someone is an amateur, or is an indication that Microsoft intends to kill Symantec's business. If the problem is deliberate, then I suppose that Microsoft and its executives have sold all their Symantec stock.
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
Dude, get your story straight. NAV does not run 14 processes (I got it running at work and at home) and I can identify 4 NAV processes running at about 24 MB. I don't use NPC but I've seen others people running it and it does consume alot more memory/processes. So be it NPC is a resource hog but don't knock NAV, it is not a terrible antivirus product by itself afterall.
Have you had to clean a PC with the user saying they have "Norton" running only to find it is with definitions over a year and a half old.
Norton is a waste of cycles, time and disk space.
If Vista is done right, it will slow it down. No OS can protect against total stupidity, but a decent design with decent defaults (which XP lacks) can make a big difference.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I've been using MS AntiSpyware for months with no issues and surprisingly good results. This new feature to remove Norton is a bonus. Norton is difficult enough to remove unassisted. Typically when I find a client with Norton, my first recommendation is to backup their data, wipe the HD and reinstall everything except Norton.
As many others have stated here, Norton Utilities for DOS were good. Somehow Symantec/Norton never learned how to use Windows, though. I've witnessed Norton showing the most false positives of any product and effectively taking over the system until it is unusable. I was never surprised when using a McAfee virus scan that Norton AV and utilities showed up as viruses.
Anyone I meet who uses Norton, I automatically classify as "uninformed." 90% of the time they're using AOL, too. I feel it is my duty as a technically saavy IT professional to educate them and free them of their mass-marketed, money-consuming, technically useless demons.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but... "Good job, Microsoft!"
yeah, all the geek laughs "well you shouldnt run beta" Ill have you know MS antispyware is far better than Ad aware, or the other applications out there. This new thing though is a complete problem. I took the bait, "oh my god a password logger" so now my corporate antivirus client is broken.
Last month, a smaller antivirus producer was also detected by MS Antispyware as a Chinese nasty. Last year, the same producer reported a similar issue. Meanwhile, Microsoft protects itself by keeping this Beta1 title on this "product"; but the wide spreading of this (the software has been downloaded about 25 million times, according to Microsoft) could be very well a marketing tactics... I just wonder: are these the opening shots in Microsoft's attempt to muscle competitors out of the lucrative software security market?
i installed windows defender beta 2. i was wondering about not having an icon in the system tray anymore as with beta 1 version. Am i missing something or is this just going to run in the background?