Symantec sucks!

G'Day,

I just needed to blow of a little steam after my experience trying to sort a minor Norton AV 2003 problem.

I reformatted the HDD recently so as to load SP2 on a clean XP install.
I subsequently had to reinstall NAV 2003. No problems..it all works and updates etc.

But....I have lost my subscription expiry date (which I'd only just paid A$54 for a couple of weeks ago).

Now I spent about 4 hours on the Symantec site (phew!)...
Sent Symantec in excess of six messages via this site... (Not one response yet)
Spent four hours on the phone yesterday before getting someone who said "That's a simple problem...I'll have it fixed immediately...Just run 'live-update' in an hour or so and it will be fixed"....

Surprise, surprise.....Guess what?.........IT"S STILL NOT FIXED!!!!!!!
So is it another four hours today??

There is absolutely no customer/product support from this company.
This clearly is a simple problem which must happen to everyone who does a reinstall...so why can't I get it sorted?

Now I know some will ask why I am using NAV......well it was on the machine from purchase....it has worked fine...and it is a case of better the devil you know...

Knowing my luck.I would probably have HUGE troubles trying to fully uninstall it in favour of another AV.

My spleen feels a little better now....

Cheers,

Buck

 

You've spent A$50 on Norton and your complaining! I spent £50 for my years subscription (FW & AV) and I still have 7 months to run on it, but I've had to uninstall and completely give up 'cos of the LOUSY technicall support Symantec give! They NEVER read the emails you send and always answer questions you haven't asked while referring you to articles you've already read and are of no help anyway.

I've given up on Symantec , do yourself a favour and do the same! If you want a good free AV while you're looking around or sorting things out, try AntiVir/AVPE it gives good solid protection for most purposes.

 

Give NOD32 a try, 100%VB rating and Microsoft uses it.

 

Thanks Topper,

It's not so much the $50 as the terrible lack of support.

I don't mind to pay (even again) for a decent (supported) product.

I'm quite happy to eat the $50....and then give Symantec $50 worth of bad press! Google is full of hits from very unsatisfied Symantec customers.

As I said before..I'd love to flick NAV in favour of someting else, but there are sometimes big probs in uninstalling NAV products...My luck, I'd end up in a worse position.

Cheers,

Buck

 

I'm now trialling KAV 5 and intend to stick with it. I emailed Kaspersky twice asking trivial questions and to my amazement they replied with very full and precise answers the same day (with Symantec it would have taken a week to get a reply!). They even told me exactly how to delete Registry keys left over from Symantec which might have caused an 'issue'.

I had no problem clearing out NAV but I had 2004 which I believe may have a better uninstaller than 2003. If you've got NAV2003 you may need a special tool to clear it out - but I think you can D/L this from Major Geeks. Maybe someone else with experience of this can advise.

Good luck anyway!

 

I know that you can reset the subscription of NAV 2001 and 2002 by removing NAV, LiveUpdate, and LiveReg. You may want to try this with NAV 2003.

Follow the direction at the Symantec website to completely remove NAV from your PC. I've used Avast Home for several years. Still no bugs since 2000. If you're not happy with Avast, then check out Command antivirus ($20), McAfee ($10), or NOD ($40).

STAY AWAY FROM NORTON AV!

 

Hi, thanks for the news about symantic being lousy; I had my renewel of them, and I just paid for it,and renewed the Symantic subscription protection, and now I have it, for another year; thanks for the news about "Nod 32," if I have trouble with Symantic, I will definitely try it. That's great to find there are good protection, besides Symantic; my computer repair guy, said that Symantic is the best, so this non-techie just went along with it. So far, I have not had any trouble with it. ?
But, you never know, cause my avatar is Daffy Duck (ha ha)
But, really, Sweetie, thanks for all the extra news about this. Very helpful, bless you. (if you like being blessed, that is.) "Live Long and Prosper", and Big Buck, I hope your software troubles get better--you deserve not to get screwed with all this technology. good luck, kiddo--to all of us, too.

 

Thanks for the advice guys.......

Guess what?.........Symantec just sent me a customer satisfaction survey...........How stupid are they!!!

http://61.88.40.70/survey/symantec/online_cs_survey.asp?callID=611526&callDate=10/6/2004

Give it a try..........I just gave them both barrels!

Cheers,

Buck

 

Thanks for that link - I made very good use of it!!!

That's another two barrels up Symantec's jaxy!!!

 

This works for me.First install Reg Cleaner Version 3.8 to verify all your software etc.
Uninstall Norton AV via the provided uninstaller, or via windows programs add delete software, or via Reg Cleaner. Then use Reg Cleaner (version 3.8 ,the best version I think) and do an automatic registry clean. I have used this method to uninstall so many programs and it is always successful. So much easier than editing the registry in the normal way, and trying to find all the hidden dll.s and lost bits. I have used this method with Windows 2000 and Win 98. I have not tried it with Win XP.
I am sure there are other programs equivalent to Reg Cleaner and hope others here can suggest some. Also agree about getting rid of Norton AV. It is an expensive waste of time in my opinion.

 

I want to comment on the very first post on here. Symantec is the world leader in internet security not computer education. 95% of any issues with the software are generated from user error.

Also, I noticed that you said you "formatted your HD" how would you expect for that information to stay with your program on the computer after you wiped it completely clean?

I do not mean to be rude but I am a Network Security Admin and there is a reason other professionals in the industry like my self only use NAV for virus protection, because we understand the technology and know that it is the most popular for a reason.

....the problem is this is the same thing every other simple computer user does when they run in to a problem

1) they don't think that they should ever have a problem
2) when they have a problem it has nothing to do with what they did it is all the softwares fault or the computers
3) when you do a fresh install of NAV it comes with a year subscription as long as it is a retail version if you did not get that year when you installed the program again you either did not format the HD correctly, or you are installing a OEM which means it came with the computer when you bought it WHICH means it was a FREE software, which also means if you did not "blow" 50$ on it, or the software you bought was a software that was not meant to be sold.

I just have a hard time on people ragging on great products and companies.

Some advise for you,

1) When you format a HD there is NOTHING LEFT! you are going to have to start over after that.
2) Don't be upset with the company because you did not understand the technology well enough to know that all of your subscription info is stored on your local computer and not some master server online
3) Don't renew you subscription...just buy the damn software.

Thank you, sorry, and good day to you common folk.

 

Symantec's software just consumes all your system resources. If you use Norton Systemworks 2004, I bet you'll be seeing your CPU at 100% non-stop.

 

it is true that NSW "can" use a good portion of system resources especially if the configuration allows it to do that. I disagree with it using 100% however. And the comments made were more towards AV protection and that side of the software. I personally do not run NSW. I do not have to because I can do all of the diagnoses and clean manually that all of the products in NSW do. I do how ever take advantage and use NAV on any personal home computer that I might have, but I also have other machines a network that are running a corporate AV from Symantec.

there are ways to configure NSW so that it will not have so many "running" processes at once, and that should lower that amount of system resources it is using.

 

Honestly, Norton Antivirus 2005 is a quiet good product (apart from weekly updates and terrible tech support). They should fix the large number of processes and you have a very good antivirus. You can use my Norton Rapid Updater (eXcessive Software page) if you want to be up-to-date with hourly Rapid updates.

 

hybrid threat: Maybe if you left the comfort of the server room once in a while, and went out in the field, you'd see the problem. That's great that you've got NAV Corporate working great, but you can't honestly expect every end user to have the same knowledge and resources as yourself. There are also circumstances where things like that are not avoidable, where you have to format, replace the physical drive, etc, and don't have time/warning/ability to back up the data. Are you really suggesting that all home users gain the type of education as an IT Pro, and implement the same M&Ps as yourself? If so, I would assume you are activly teaching and providing necessary tools at no cost?

You might try downloading NOD32 for yourself, leave your work at the office for a while

 

Well said, Notok.

 

There are those of us who understand the technology as well as you and come to a different conclusion with respect to the home user offering.

At my work we also use NAV corporate. It's an older version, fairly stable, fairly lean, with minimal problems. Problems do crop up occassionally, but the network admins keep track of this as they occur and resolve them quickly because, well, that's part of their job and they do it well.

Personally, I believe NAV is a strong AV. It performs extremely well in its primary function. However, it has multiple Achilles heels. Compared to other AV's I've run, the Live Update component is an absolute programmatic abomination. I've never experienced an update module that is so unstable and prone to failure. I swear that a quick perusal of user problems identifies this as a major issue in the majority of major problems. In addition, there is absolutely no excuse for requiring users to employ manual procedures to augment an uninstall in the event of installation problems or to clean the machine in the event an alternate AV is to be installed. This is sloppy uninstall practice, no more, no less. At the very least, a utility that covers all facets to be addressed should be available - the cleanup utilities provided are partial solutions only. Finally, the home versions of NAV can suck the life out of a PC. This generally isn't the case of the corporate version.

I realize that the absolute number of user problems reported for NAV is certainly reflective of their market share, that comes with the territory. I also realize that many users make poor choices in how problems are handled, and that can send your PC into a death spiral. NAV is an excellent choice for an AV if it coexists well with the other applications on you PC. For a number of us, that's not the case. I am a former NAV/Norton user, my first Norton product dated back to 1983. There were serious problems related to the use of NSW 2004 on PC's with multiple user accounts - it was as though the beta test team implicitly assumed that the 1 PC-1 user model universally held. In the home environment, that's a bad assumption and it created a number of problems that took about six months to fix.

To infer, as you implicitly have, that someone who has had a poor experience with NAV simply does not understand what they are dealing with is disingenuous to say the least.

NAV is popular for a number of reasons, many unconnected with performance. It was early to the market, and has very a favorable historical name recognition. Their marketing department does an excellent job of parlaying this advantage. Finally, for many folks, it works absolutely fine and their no reason it should not be the AV of choice.

NAV is not a poor choice for an AV, it is an excellent one. However, that does not mean that an alternate choice is inferior, nor that the user making that alternate choice is either misguided or unaware of the technology behind the choice. There are many factors to be weighed in selecting an AV, and depending on the personalized weighting scheme applied, NAV may or may not be in the mix of products that are appropriate for a given user.

Finally, your attitude is no better than those who blindly condemn NAV based on a single poor experience involving a vaguely characterized problem; you're simply sitting at the other end of the extreme.

Blue

 

NAV is popular because it comes preloaded with many new PCs. They worked out a sweatheart deal with HP and other PC vendors to include NAV for a small kickback fee. Who wouldn't want to protect their new PC with a $30 virus subscription? The poor uninstall is by design to keep non-tech savvy users from trying/using another AV solution. And yes, LiveUpdate is junk! There is no daily update because piggy Symantec wants to save $ on server overhead.

McAfee is a cheaper alternative to NAV. No product activation. Much better detection capability. Less load on you system.

 

The Norton is not sucks, it's very sucks!!!

Slow down the PC's, not very configurable, uninstall complications, takes a lot of time to open, doesn't have incremental updates, etc...

Very bad to be true...

The Symantec version is a little better...

 

Unless you are running a business or such, why do you pay for a virus protection program or programs? From some of your post, wouldn't free protection programs suffice?

Also aren't you now bashing a product in this forum? Why did you jump on my case for doing basically the same thing? Isn't this just a tad hypocritical?

Thanks
Wildman

 

Well its not perfectly true. Incrimental update system is used for a very long time (from NAV2000 for sure,but i belive it was before too). The only strange thing is that they don't take advantage of incrimental updates,because they release them only weekly(but they release Rapid Updates horly lol,whats the point). Uninstaller works like charm in NAV2005 (NAV2004 had several problems thats true).

 

Incremental updates with more that 100kb...

On any new version NAV 200x -> (resources hog)++;

...

 

An excellent and insightful post. The only point I would add is Symantec's use of Product Activation in many of their products including NAV - this has the potential to cause extra complications and problems should the worst happen and a disk format/Windows reinstall be required (and is quite likely the root cause of the problem detailed at the start of this thread). I avoid any products requiring such activation for this reason alone (including Windows XP).

 

Vampiric_Crow,the last time i was testing NAV i got 22KB big LiveUpdate update second day after installation.
It also depends how much they add into definitions for that specific update.
I wouldn't call 17-20MB memory usage a resource hog.
Symantec really fixed many big problems that were present in older versions.

 

Microsoft uses it! Wow, a ringing endorsement from the folks who enabled 99% of the security holes in the first place.