Norton for Mac

[BobP1776]

Running on Mac OS X 10.7.2.  NAV For Mac 12 with everything up to date per Live Update.

Just now I went into NAV to see if there had been a newer update to the Vulnerability Protection signatures and discovered, to my surprise, that Automatic Antivirus Protection was OFF!

(Idle Time Scan and Vulnerability Protection were still on, and after turning Automatic Antivirus Protection back ON -- which requires an Administrator password -- the settings for that protection were still at the expected defaults.)

There is nothing in the NAV View History listing -- just Live Update reports.  Theis is nothing in Console > Crash Reporter or Console > User Diagnostic Reports.  And of course I have no recollection of turning this off myself.  (I presume it would have required an Administrator password if I had accidentally selected to turn it OFF.)

So:

1)  Is there a known bug that might cause this to happen?

2)  Are there other message strings I should search for in Console > All Messages to try to spot WHEN this happened?

I've no reason to believe my computer is compromised.  I presume Automatic Antivirus Protection just failed at some point and left itself turned off.  Of course, I'm runniing a full system scan now to double-check.

--Bob

[BobP1776]

As expected, the Full System Scan found no problems.

And Automatic Antivirus Protection remains ON (as it should) across Restarts.  So whatever might have caused this does not seem to have any lingering effect.

--Bob

[Graham4846]

Hi Bob,

This also happened to me the other day.

This was an issue during Beta testing ie Antivirus was in the red and off, after boot-up.

Graham.

[BobP1776]

I'm checking it periodically now, and so far no repeats.

Was there a particular Console message associated with the failure during the Beta testing?  I can search for that and see if the same thing happened here.

The most disturbing bit of this is that there was no indication of change of status in Quick Menu.  If I had not fired up the NAV application itself, I never would have noticed.

--Bob

[Graham4846]

A number of beta testers reported this problem such as  "Virus Protection Switch TurnsOFF for no reason and leaves you unprotected" found in the Mac beta Posts.

It was felt that the issue would be fixed in the released version.

So far, like you, the issue has not reappeared - I wonder if it's something to do with liveupdate??

I did ask during beta if the quick menu tick could be replaced with a green tick - when everything is OK, and a red cross when a problem has occurred, such as antivirus turned off, vulnerability protection turned off etc,etc.

Otherwise there is no indication of a problem/fault, unless you have a look every day in Norton Antivirus Status.

Best regards, Graham.

[BobP1776]

I've continued to check this several times a day and so far there have been NO repeat instances of Automatic Antivirus Protection being turned off unexpectedly.

So whatever happened in the one instance I reported in the first post, it does not appear to be a frequent problem.

--Bob

[Graham4846]

Like you I've had no repeat instances of Automatic Antivirus Protection being turned off unexpectedly.

Appears to be behaving itself!!

- Graham.

[BobP1776]

OK this problem happened again:  Automatic Antivirus Protection was unexpectedly turned OFF.  This time I'm dead certain I didn't do it, even by accident.

Digging into logs and such reveals the following.  NOTE:  You need to be logged into an account with Administrator privileges to see all the possible messages in Utilities > Console.

1)  I'm on Lion 10.7.2.  Everything is up to date in NAV for Mac 12.

2)  I had just Restarted the Mac.  Checking in NAV > View Reports I see that LIve Update installed the 111115002 Virus Definition Update *BEFORE* I opened up Norton Antivirus to check on the status of Automatic Antivirus Protection.  NOTE:  Even though I have Live Update set to display its results status page every time it actually installs an update, this automatically initiated update after the Restart DID NOT DISPLAY RESULTS!  I suppose it is possible that the failure to display the Live Update installation results might possibly be related to why Automatic Antivirus Protection was also turned OFF somehow.  I've no way to know whether it turned OFF before or after that definition install.  This could also explain why this failure doesn't happen on every Restart:  I.e., it can only fail if there happens to be an update to install when the automatic check happens as part of a Restart.

3)  Upon opening NAV, it showed the status of Automatic Antivirus Protection as OFF.  I changed it back to ON.  It properly required an Administrator password to do this.

4)  My normal log-in account does not have Administrator privileges.  I Restarted the Mac again, logged in to my Administrator account, and checked around in Utilities > Console

5)  There are no crash reports related to Symantec producs since I installed Lion.

6)  There are no Antivirus Protection related messages in Console since that Restart where I detected the problem, nor during the span of the prior Restart (during which I checked and confirmed several times that Automatic Antivirus Protection was ON as it was supposed to be).

6)  Vulnerability Protection is throwing periodic error -34 messages.  This is already being discussed in the NIS 5 Vulnerability Protection thread.  NOTE:  I have NAV installed, not NIS.

7)  Symantec Error Reporting is throwing periodic messages ALL saying that it had 0 errors to submit.

8)  Nothing relevant is found in User or System Diagnostic Reports or Crash Reporter.

Once again THIS FAILURE IS NASTY, because there is no indication in the Norton Quick Menu icon in the Mac menu bar indicating anything is wrong.  You have to think to manually open Norton Antivirus to discover you are not protected!

--Bob

[BobP1776]

Completed another Full System scan, and, as expected, no problems found.  I've no reason to believe my Mac is compromised -- just that NAV is having some sort of problem keeping Antivirus Protection ON.

--Bob

[Graham4846]

This again has happened to me just like you.

I was just about to do a post about it, when I saw yours.

Over a three day period I found that the Automatic Antivirus Protection was Turned Off, and in the RED.

I agree you wouldn't know anything about this condition unless you checked Norton Antivirus Status.

NAV certainly needs a Status Indicator to show that it is working alright, and everything has been updated.

A nice Big Green Tick, and a nice Big Red Cross would do nicely!!!!!

After turning it on each time I found it to be OFF, I got fed up, so I have tried an uninstall - then a fresh install!!

So far it's been OK and stayed ON over the past two days.

It does appear to be associated with the Virus Definitions not updating properly.

I use Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 (11C74).

I'll keep an eye on NAV and let you know if it happens again.

The techs at Symantec appear to be keeping quiet about this problem!!!

- Graham.