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Symantec
has always had my Antivirus (AV) software protection of choice, and
although there have been a few problems with their products along
the way, it was never enough of an irritation to provoke an article.
But Norton Internet Security 2002 most definitely is. It is supposed
to include a personal firewall to defend against crackers, antivirus
protection, privacy control to keep your personal information private,
and a parental control to keep your children safe on the Internet.
It looks very similar to previous releases of Norton Internet Security
(2000 and 2001), which I've used on other machines running Windows
95/98 and Windows NT Workstation 4.0, but the previous versions are
not compatible with Windows XP. So I installed the latest version
to protect my new workhorse.
The installation was not fun, and contained several error messages
stating that some script or other was not able to run & did I
wish to continue. I was finally able to reach the end of the line,
and was prompted to restart the computer, and run a Live Update as
soon as possible.
My computer restarted, and then it restarted, and then it restarted
again, and finally restarted again. I was wondering if I would ever
be able to keep it on long enough to see the splash screen! But I
did finally get to see the XP screen again, and noticed that the antivirus
icon on the taskbar had a big red "X" through it.
Being such a good little girl, and always doing as I'm told, <g>
I started the Live Update, thinking possibly this was why the icon
was inactive. But the software did not even try to update the antivirus
definitions, and even after asking for all the latest bells and whistles
Symantec had, it still was not enabled. I tried to enable the AV and
it refused from any point I tried. After several hours of trying to
get this product to work properly, and calling in the Mounties (AKA
resident Alpha Geek) to try to make it work properly, I gave up in
exasperation.
My next strategy was to uninstall the program, as everyone knows by
now that you cannot install one AV over another, and just maybe I
could re-install the software and overcome the problems with the initial
install. But it refused to let me uninstall it, saying I had to disable
the antivirus part of it first. But I could not do that anywhere that
I could find, as all it would do was inform me that it was already
disabled. Finally, the Alpha Geek was able to convince the software
through the XP side of things that, indeed, the antivirus had been
disabled. However, this was all for naught, as it now said I could
not uninstall it unless I logged in through the “Supervisor” account.
There was no supervisor account! There were only two accounts on this
machine, my account, and a guest account.
Panic. Desperation. Anger at a company who had always been a trusted
friend, and now was just a shareholder's country club. Finally, disgust
at what choices I now had because of one piece of buggy software that
was not ready for prime time.
I logged onto Symantec's web page to look for some tech support. After
searching through all the FAQ's, and finding nothing that resembled
the problems I encountered, I tried to contact them with a personal
message. But there didn't seem to be any place to reach them with
a personal message, only a "forum" where others could post
their requests as well. So I left a public message in the forum, asking
for guidance on how to uninstall Norton Internet Security 2002.
I did find a LOT of other messages from people who were having similar
problems. Only a handful of them had any replies, and those replies
basically said to use a file on their website to uninstall the software.
But to do that, one had to hack the registry in order to disable the
antivirus, etc., and the solution was quite convoluted. Definitely
not for the fainthearted, and definitely not something you wanted
to do to a brand-new computer. And the replies to
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Caveat
Emptor ...