NOD32 Complete Failure

I know this post won’t make me popular, but in all fairness, people should be able to read about the mess that NOD32 caused on my computer.

I’ve used Norton for years, and like others, was fully aware of how much it slowed the system down. I read glowing comments about NOD32 and decided to give it a try with the 30-day trial. I installed it and made sure all the options for protection were turned on. Biggest mistake I ever made.

One week into using it, a link from Google took me to a site that made NOD32 light up. It warned me numerous times about viruses and Trojans, and reported that they were terminated and moved to quarantine. I quickly closed the web site and went to look in quarantine. Nothing there. Hmmm.

I began getting pop-ups, couldn’t open I.E. without it taking me to a hijack site, began getting bogus icons in my system tray telling me I had a virus, etc. etc.

NOD32 did not stop any of these threats even though it reported that they were stopped. Obviously something went wrong, I’m sure that is not normal for everyone. But nothing in NOD32 reported that its ability to stop threats wasn’t working, or that there was an error in the program.

I realize that all the great reviews of NOD32 must be there for some reason, but in my experience it is one of the worst pieces of software I ever tried. What bothers me the most was that it DETECTED the malware, and REPORTED that it was terminated and quarantined. It actually did neither. I couldn’t get it off my system fast enough. I reinstalled Norton and began what would be many hours of clean up. Norton may be slow and hog resources, but at least it WORKS.

All in all, there were 6 viruses / Trojans detected. Norton was able to remove 4 of them, the other 2 I had to hunt down and remove manually (Yazzle).

If NOD32 works for everyone else, that’s great. I can only tell you about what happened on my system and warn others that there is a chance it will happen to them. I’m not a computer novice. I’ve built my own systems for years, and am well acquainted with Windows idiosyncrasies and numerous areas of software and hardware troubleshooting. And I can definitely say that NOD32 will never touch my system again.

 

I am very sorry to hear about your problems. As a long time user and Reseller, I have never seen these kinds of problems on my systems or any of my clients.

I do have a question. How did you go about setting up your NOD32? What choice did you make when you chose the install type? Did you manually configure all the scan options for IMON, and AMON?

This will definitely help me and us to determine what went wrong.

Thanks

 

maybe the previous installation of Norton affected nod32.

what steps did u take in removing Norton?

 

Since it’s uninstalled now, I can’t give a detailed account of the setup, but I can tell you I had AMON, DMON, EMON and IMON all turned on. The initial installation was a Typical installation, not Custom. I never turned any options off.

As for Norton’s uninstall, I thought about that. I know Norton can get its hooks into everything. But I’m sure I’m not the only guy who ever went from Norton to NOD32. I used the regular uninstall feature, then rebooted. WinXP notified me I had no virus protection. I then installed the NOD32 trial. I don’t recall if a reboot was required after installation, but if it was, I did it. I then did an initial deep scan and no threats were found. The computer was rebooted several times in the days following installation, and no problems appeared. The daily definition updates appeared to be working. No sign of anything wrong.

I don’t doubt that this was some sort of fluke. I’m not claiming that each installation of NOD32 will behave like it did in my case. But something clearly went wrong and it was bad enough that an average computer user would have had to pay someone to clean the system. Other than notifying me of threats, there appears to have been no real protection at all. What’s worse is that the notification that the threats had been terminated gave a false sense of security.

 

Never heard anything like that before, been using NOD for a little over a year now and has worked pretty much flawless the whole time.

 

This certainly sounds like an unpleasant experience and if it happened to me it would dent my confidence in NOD32. I am another satisfied NOD32 user though who has had no bad experiences except when I didn't disable it fully and it messed up during the XP SP2 install. However ESET sent me a build that worked and was soon the general release.

Would you be interested in trying to get NOD32 working properly or have you lost faith in it?

Fairy

 

I appreciate everyone’s courteous replies, but I can’t risk trying it again. Too much to lose if it happens again. My purpose in posting was to caution people that it CAN happen, and hopefully Eset can find what happened and prevent it in the future.

Thanks

 

you really should of run the norton uninstaller tool after the normal add or remove programs since norton does leave bits behind

 

Could you provide Eset with the link that caused the trouble?

 

I don't know if this solution will work for anyone else but I was having complete failure problems with lots of memory read errors which did not tell the source, failure to connect to servers for updates, not unistalling/installing corectly, not loading at start up even when I placed in start up folder myself or added entries to registry myself then it occured to me after I made a support ticket out that since I was getting these crapy random cannot access memory blah blah blah errors frequenty, and after testing my memory etc it occured to me it was freakin MS$ Windblows DEP. I went to properties on my computer icon, selected Advance, Windows Performance, Data Execution Prevention and switched the settings to Turn DEP on for Windows programs and services only and it corrected all my problems, after another uninstall/reinstall of NOD32. No more update problems/connecting to server and it loads correctly. Forgot to mention that NOD32 Service always showed it was running but didn't do anything. Windows DEP adds another reason I like to use Ubuntu and Xandros.

 

Then you should have known Norton is notorious for leaving bits and pieces behind and you need to run the Norton uninstaller to clean everything.

Sorry you had so much trouble.

 

I did run the Norton uninstaller. That’s how I removed it. Sorry you didn’t understand.

 

I went from Nortons to NOD without having to do so. I have been using NOD for over a year with no problems that I can lay at the feet of Symantec Corp.

 

sometimes just using add/remove programs is not enough. in that case, symantec provides the Norton Removal Tool. its generally a good idea to run that tool after using add/remove programs.

 

I think 6string meant the Norton Removal Tool. I know thats what I meant. Any way I don't think Norton remnants had anything to do with 6strings problem although I'm no expert. I think the cause lies elsewhere.

 

ill wait for an answer.

needless to say, NAV leftovers seem a likely culprit for the problems running nod32.

 

I must admit that I've seen a few times the "missing quarantined file issue".
Most of the time it happens when you save a file (from browser, network mapped drive and so on). On creation NOD32 scans the file, detects the threat and pretends that it was moved to quarantine (but i doesn't).
But I've never get an infection is such way. The file isn't created and, of course, cannot infect the system.

 

Your grasping at straws here I believe, although I'd like to hear from Marcos or the Inspector on this.

 

I'm sorry that you've had so much bother and understand if you do not wish to use nod anymore. I am not an expert, but everyone's computer is unique in it's hardware and software setup, probably something has gone wrong either with the copy of nod you had, or the interaction your copy of nod has had with other software on your computer, I have never heard or read of anyone having your particular problem before, so it is unlikely to be a general flaw in nod32 and perhaps a little unfair to say nod32 is a complete failure when no other (that I have seen on here or elsewhere) users are reporting the same problem. Conflicts (if thats what your problem is) or faults can happen with any software.
Good luck with whatever AV software you choose.

 

What link? What malware? 99.999999999999999999% of the time, the response is "I don't know, I didn't notice". You can't post malware links in this forum, but nothing's preventing you from emailing it to me.

 

Slight correction.

When in the course of troubleshooting an individuals possible problem We do allow links from that individual which could help prove\disprove whether that visited site was part of the problem.

As always....We do ask that the link not be hyperlinked\clickable for odvious reasons and when that is not followed We will then moderate the link and make it not clickable.

HTH,
Bubba

 

Hi 6string, welcome to Wilders.

Please provide the webpage that you had the problems on and we will check it out, just make sure NOT to make the link clickable.

Cheers

 

Let me clarify the uninstall method – I used the Norton Antivirus Uninstaller that was in the program group. I didn’t follow up with any secondary removal measures. But before anyone jumps on that as my negligence, if NOD32 requires more extreme measures than the associated uninstaller to remove other antivirus software, that should be prominently displayed in the installer and on Eset’s web site.

Even if that was the cause, there is no way that the result should be that NOD32 tells you there are threats, tells you it terminated and quarantined them, and then fails to do both. There has to be a better error handling routine than that.

The computer this occurred on is my computer at work. It’s a painfully slow machine – Celeron 2.4 GHz with only 256mb of ram. I don’t have very many apps on it, just what I need at work. MS Office, Adobe Acrobat, pcAnywhere, a dos database, and a few other small apps that escape me right now. So it wasn’t a system that is used for anything unusual or pushing the limits. Very basic.

Hopefully this thread won’t turn into attacks on me because some of you find it too tempting to imply I was doing something wrong or being less than honest in my description of what happened. As for the website that contained the threats, I don’t have a clue what it was now. It was a link from Google that I clicked on, and things started to fall apart quickly. I know the searches were related to security software, as I was still checking other anti-virus software options while still in the NOD32 trial period. I’m not about to go see if I can find the link again. I do recall that the site I kept getting hijacked to was syssecurity dot com (or similar), but I’m sure that wasn’t the original site.

As I mentioned above, Yazzle was one of the threats, the others I don’t recall. Not unreasonable. When you’re at work and gambling and porn pop-ups start to make a sudden appearance on your desktop even with I.E. closed, your concern is not to memorize the names of each threat that NOD32 failed to stop.

I can see that most of you would genuinely like to help, and I know my descriptions lack some of the specifics needed by Eset to do proper trouble shooting. But in the situation I was in, I simply needed to get it off my system and get onto cleaning it. Thanks for listening to my frustration. For those of you who are happy with NOD32, I have no doubt it’s working well for you. But be careful. Things can (and in my case DID) go wrong.

 

No this is NOT a NOD32 issue, it is an issue where Norton does not remove itself properly through a normal uninstall. This being the case Symantec have developed 3 components to properly remove their software, these components can be found on their website. I have seen way too many issues with placing on another antivirus after Norton not to use their removal tools each and every time.

We are yet to see a single piece of evidence that this in fact has been the case, you have been asked for the website and have not provided it. Upon providing the link it will be thoroughly checked out and the results posted here.

That is a benign site that is simply listed by techbuyer . com, nothing on that site appears to have any form of infection.

Well we are yet to see proof of this catastrophic failure of arguably the worlds leading antivirus and without such proof there really isn’t any point on continuing with this thread as it is pointless.

In four years of personally installing NOD32 on hundreds and hundreds of machines I have never seen such a massive failure and I’m sure if it was out there I would have seen it by now.

It is like saying my hand made brand new Ferrari blew up, lost its breaks and steering, the tyres ran flat and paint pealed off as I drove it out of the dealership.

Blackspear.

 

Your response is offensive and unprofessional. I have nothing to gain by fabricating this occurrence, which is what you’re implying. I’m not pushing Norton or any other package (I’ve had my frustrations with Norton too, but it never completely failed). If you don’t believe this occurred, that’s your problem, not mine. In the situation I was in, it was not possible to provide “proof” as you describe it. Makes it quite convenient for you to deny that it happened doesn’t it?

Apparently not.

No, it’s not. It’s like saying NOD32 failed to stop harmful software that it claimed it had stopped.

Your response is one more reason I will have nothing more to do with NOD32. You can delete my forum account now. That will give you ample opportunity to have some final words at my expense. Too bad the forum moderator had to lower the thread to this level.