Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus

[gumboman]

I'm having a number of problems with NIS 2008.

Main problem is NIS 2008 blocks my home network from sharing drives. I have 3 drive partitions on my Desktop and I share the E drive with my laptop via a Linksys 4-Port Router. NIS is blocking that sharing. I can uninstall NIS via Norton Removal Tool on the Desktop and the sharing works just fine - reinstall NIS and the sharing is "blocked". I have the laptop's IP address in the "trusted zone" of the Desktop and have the Desktop's IP Address in the"trusted zone" of the laptop. I have NIS 2008 on each machine. The E drive has been mapped to the laptop for a long time and has worked fine until a few Live Updates ago - I'm not sure which one. Now when I click on the Shared "E" drive on the laptop, I get an error message that "....may not have authoriy, etc". I am logged on as Admin. on each machine. The "mapped" drive on the Laptop does not indicate any problem, except when I try accessing it.

I'm have major problems contacting anyone from Symantec on these issues. I've tried email, phone contact, live chat and get no connection with anyone at Symantec. Phone contact and live chat get to downloading the appropriate software and goes no further (I tried turning off NAV to see if that was the problem, but no). Emails are not responded to. Really need to make contact to solve my problems.

Other problems are a couple minor ones with Live Update

Can anyone assist me in resolving these problems or provide a way to make contact with Symantec?

Thanks

Charlie

[edit: removed bad links.]

Message Edited by Allen_K on 07-23-2008 09:59 PM

[Floating_Red]

What is your Operating System (O.S.) and Service Pack (S.P.)?

Message Edited by Floating_Red on 07-17-2008 11:29 PM

[gumboman]

Sorry - Desktop:  WinXP, SP3 --- Laptop:  Vista (no SP1).

[ChesterK]

Hi Gumboman,

There are a few things that could likely be going on:

1) Since you are trusting by IP address, these same IP addresses may not be the same ones given by your Linksys router to your desktop and notebook each time you connect. (I'm assuming you have DHCP enabled for both machines -- which means the IP addresses for each machine can change each time you connect to the network)

2) If you have the drives mapped out by IP addresses, #1 above can also cause your mapping to become out of date.

3) When your desktop IP address has changed, this also affects the trusted entry you entered earlier to become out of date.

Explanation: 

The desktop needs to allow inbound filesharing requests (from your notebook).  You should only need to configure the desktop correctly to allow the notebook access.  (if you want the desktop to access the notebook, then you'll need to configure the notebook side) 

Possible Solutions:

1) You can set the network trust to "Shared" or "Trusted" via the Trust Control options.  To do so:

    a) From the Main UI, on the left hand side, goto Options -> Norton Internet Security ->  Personal Firewall -> Trust Control

    b) The active tab should come up by default.  It should show the currently connected networks. 

    c) Select the network and click on the Trust button. 

    d) A dialog will prompt you whether you want to allow file sharing on the network or all network activity.  (Both will allow file sharing activity.  Depending how secure your network is, you can select the more open "all network activity" if you need it.

    e) Select one of the choices and now all devices from your local network should be allowed filesharing through the firewall.  (You still need to enter the correct Windows username/pw)

2) (Advanced) You can trust each machine by its MAC address.  (your notebook probably has 2 MAC addresses, one for the wireless, one for the wired).  To do so:

     a) Open up the Trust Control UI following the steps above

     b) Select the "Trusted" tab

     c) Click Add.

     d) You can now add and enter in the MAC address

  
The first option is easier but will allow any device on the network a chance to access your shares.  If your network is secure, this would be the easiest option.

Hope that helps.

Thanks,

Chester 

[gumboman]

Chester,

A couple of questions.  How do I tell if I have DHCP enabled?  (Desktop is running WinXP and Laptop is running Vista).  If not, should it be enabled?

In Option 2 - how does one find the MAC addresses for the laptop, and do I place these in the trusted zone of the desktop?

My local network has only my desktop and laptop attached, so I will follow your instructions in Option 1 first and let you know what happens.  I'm tied up with a few things, so might be a day or two before I can finish trying it and get back to you.

Thanks for all the insights.  Your note appears to be a great place to start.

Charlie

[ChesterK]

Hi Gumboman,

 You can check DHCP status on an adapter by:

1) Click on the Start Menu -> type "cmd", <enter>

2) A command prompt window will appear

3) type "ipconfig /all"   , <enter>   (without the quotes)

4) a long list adapter info will come up. 

5) Scroll to the adapter you want to look at, most likely called "Local Area Connection".

6)  There should be a line that says "DHCP Enabled", and it'll have a yes or no value.

If you've never manually assigned an IP address to your desktop, then most likely it has DHCP on.

To find the MAC addresses of your laptop:

1) Perform the "ipconfig /all" steps from above on your laptop

2) for each adapter, look at the line that says "Physical Address".  This is your MAC address.  Your notebook most likely has 2, one for "Local Area Connection" (if you have a wired connection), and a "Wireless Network" one (if you are wireless).

Another option I failed to mention is that you can also assign trust via the Network Security Map.  Just launch the map, find your notebook, click on "Edit" next to Trust Level, and set the trust there.

Let me know if you have further issues.

Thanks,

/Chester

[gumboman]

Ok Chester,

I tried your suggested Option 1 - when I got to item C (select the network and click on the Trust button), after selecting the network, the trust button is shaded, so I could go not further. 

Any idea why the trust button is shaded and not accessible?

Also after that, I did a Ipconfig on desktop and laptop and added their IP Address to the Trust Zone of the other computer.  Tried to Map the E drive - no go, (to insure I had he map address correct in the laptop for the desktop's E drive, I used the Browse button to map the drive, the E drive was shown as shared), received error;

Drive is not accessible, might not have permission to use network resource.

So, I'm still not there yet.  What can you tell me about the item C problem?

Thanks

Charlie

[ChesterK]

Hi Gumboman,

If the Trust button is grayed out, then the network has already been classified.  You can see on the first column under "Security" what the current status is.  What does it say? Most likely you have already set it to Trusted or Shared.

From the sounds of the error, the filesharing traffic has already been allowed through the firewall and the error relates to Windows permission problems.  Have you updated the user account and password recently? Have you changed permissions?  So from a firewall perspective, it seems to be configured correctly.  If the firewall was blocking the filesharing traffic, you'd see something similar to "Unable to access computer..."

Instead of going through your mapped drive.  Try this instead:

1) Find the IP of your desktop computer

2) on your notebook, goto Start Menu->Run.  Type in \\<desktop computer ip>.  For example, if your desktop is 192.168.1.100, then  you'd type "\\192.168.1.100".  You should then receive a prompt to enter your userid/pw to access the share.

Thanks,

/Chester 

[gumboman]

Chester,

Thank you so much for staying with me on this!

I did the run/IP Address (on the laptop) and it brought up the "Network> IP Address box (did not ask for a User ID/PW - I normally do not set a pw to log-in into my computer - never has used one.

Under the Network box for desktop on the laptop, it showed the Desktop E drive and the Printer that I share (the printer is connected to the laptop).  Printing from the laptop works just fine.

How do I check out my "permissions" on both the desktop (WinXP) and the laptop (Vista) to see if they are setup properly?

If we keep plugging away, we might solve this problem :)

Charlie

[gumboman]

Oh, I forgot to add - I checked the Trust area of NIS Firewall on both the desktop and laptop and they were both listed in "Active" and "Trust" as "Shared".  So, maybe it is the Windows Permissions?