Renewal time ... spooked by 3.0 horror stories

Hi, today was my renewal day for my license to use NOD32. Before renewing, I visited the forum, which I hadn't visited for a while, to see what kind of things were going on and get some new news on the product, and I see all these horror stories about 3.0 causing computers to freeze up, about having to do things in safe mode and screw around with program files and do multiple reboots and sometimes that doesn't even fix the issue. (FYI, I'm running Windows XP Media Center SP2 with all updates on a two-year old Dell computer, have no plans to go to Vista until I have to, and it seems that there are particular problems with XP along these lines).

To make a long story short, I stayed with version 2.7. I know it, it works and more than anything it gives me the "boot the computer up and it works without a lot of hassle" service that has always been one of the advantages to NOD32 for me.

I figure I'll update to 3.0 when all the bugs get ironed out.

My question is, am I going to get lesser protection from 2.7 in the interim? It's served me well so far, and personally I just want virus protection, not bells and whistles.

Question 2 is why do version updates to such programs as virus protection, spyware protection, etc. seem to cause such grief for everybody? Is it just difficult to replicate things in the lab? The reason I ask is that I've always used AdAware's spyware program, and their new version has been a total fiasco because it deletes everyone's saved logins to Web sites every time you run it and it's been over a year and they haven't figured it out and folks are leaving them in droves, as I did.

 

You will have equal Virus protection with either version. However, version 2.7 isn't geared towards spyware and rootkits as much as 3.0 is.

Each person has their own experiences with v3.0. I personally use it on every one of my computers at home and at work and I have not seen a single freeze-up, reboot, reinstall, etc.. It has worked as well as 2.7 always did.

To answer your last question (#2), the reason is, it is sometimes difficult to replicate things in software. A lot of software issues can come from hardware, software configuration issues, extra software installed on the system. Its no secret that there isn't any identical computers to be found. Even the ones fresh off the conveyer belt at Dell will soon be customized by the customer and it will no longer be the same as the person who's computer came off next.
During software development, beta testing goes on to find as many bugs as possible and fix them before the final version goes out. There is no way to know how many bugs a program is going to have or if you have them all found and fixed before final release. You can only hope to get most of them and be assured that any others will be reported by your loyal customers. There is no way of testing every possible scenario, setup or routine when designing software. So, there is no way to know exactly what things your customers will do.
During version changes, software designers often add/remove features, tweak existing features and give it a good overhaul to meet new standards and requirements, plus to make it run better. This can sometimes cause issues as we've seen with a recent update.
Everyone freaked out over it, but it was fixed very quickly. If you do not agree, look at how long it takes Microsoft to release a patch everytime they mess something up. I think a 24 turn-around fix is quite awesome.

I hope I answered your questions

 

I've been in charge of antivirus software on hundreds and hundreds of machines for 15 years now. We've been with many antivirus vendors. While it sucks, they all have this problem at some time. It's not unique to eSet.

Trend;
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,120560-page,1/article.html
http://www.trendmicro.com/en/support/pattern594/overview.htm

I had CA's antivirus several times move my entire imaging system to quarantine. Since then we've run with real time set to just block access, though I am finding that not possible with Nod32 3.0

Back in the day Intel antivirus had issues from time to time (DOS days.)

McAfee same issue;
http://www.betterantivirus.com/nod3...ern-update-causes-file-deletion-problems.html

I'm sure if I spent more time I could find more press releases.. I'm very fond of Nod32 2.7. 3.0 still has to prove itself to me. I've got it on 480 of my PC's so far. It does require some tuning, but once done seems ok.

 

Yes, thanks. I understand about beta testing, etc. It's just that sometimes ... and I'm not talking about NOD32 with this issue, I'm more talking about the problems I've had with LavaSoft's stuff since they went to a new version, just as an example to illustrate my point ... it seems like developers ought to go back to square one and start over sometimes instead of just trying to put lipstick on a pig. The issue with the logins on AdAware has been evident for a year, but their folks say they can't replicate it in their lab and they've put out a new version since then and it's still causing the problem. (Hate to vent about them on an unrelated forum, but trust me, me and a jillion other people have vented on their forum until we're blue in the face.)

As I said, I probably will stay with 2.7 for the time being and go to 3.0 when it seems like things have settled down a bit overall. I'm never one to jump into a new version of a program right off, I'm always cautious there. I've always used separate programs for virus protection and spyware/rootkit protection, it would be good to have it integrated into one program. And I'm sure the Eset folks will get everything ironed out, I've never used a program I was more pleased with than NOD32. It's the best and I recommend it to everyone who's looking for virus protection.

 

NO prob. As a programmer myself, I can tell you that sometimes its not feasible to start from scratch with something. Cost efficiency and time are big constraints with developing software. A simple little feature could end up being several thousand lines of code. Now, if it never worked right to begin with, then yes it needs to be re-worked, but if it has been functioning fine, we don't usually see any reason to mess with it.
I have had my share of experiences of a customer calling and saying that they purchases a license of one of our software packages and it did something to their machine. After countless hours and hundreds of tests, I could not duplicate it at all and had not heard of another user anywhere having the same problem. We managed to get it to work with some clever work arounds though. With your scenario, its apparent that it is a known problem though.

There is no harm in staying with 2.7 and you can download 3.0 any time during your license period.

 

I had the problem myself, did the update and all was fine.