Hello Guys, So whats the score on this then? Are we to believe that we will be left with a white elephant of a virus checker? I know 3 people who like myself run 2002 system works on XP Home SP3 perfectly till recently. I/we are not interested in buying yet more AV software as there is no problem(until recently) with this software. Others have mentioned about a fix for this…well Im sure the peeps who should be in the know would be perfectly capable of a repair within an update maybe? I feel we need to know a timescale of how long a repair could be made which is just for the people who can be bothered to use these AV’s and it would stand Norton in good stead to repair this situation before there is a mass move to other more reliable and maybe free alternatives. Just my sterling 2p worth Update please!!! regards SSB
This is obviously and transparently a ploy to FORCE users to upgrade to 'new and inproved'.
The 'technical explanations' have been pathetic and again, transparent.
They have KNOWINGLY done this and have not even denied doing so.
Anyone that treats me this way will forever lose my business, and that of my consulting clients [which number in the thousands of PCs administered], never to look back.
Subscriptions have been bought in good faith that are now useless and no longer performing as advertised.
Will my clients be reimbursed for the time I have to now spend removing Norton and installing another product?
If Norton were to offer a coupon for ANY antivirus product it would show them to be honestly taking responsibility for their actions. So... everyone hold their breath while this happens...
If this is not fixed in a couple more days they can kiss me [and all current and future clients] goodbye forever.
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Norton
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Hello to everybody!
It is apparent that Symantec will NOT give us any support.
They decided that nobody can continue to use older versions of NAV !
I have the same problem of you all with NAV 2003, running on my XP SP2 laptop . I did regularly used the Intelligent Updater until the end of april 2010. With the first May update, NAV 2003 started to show the ill-famed error message just after booting windows. The only solution I did find has been to completely unistall NAV 2003 and reinstalling it. The fuzzy thing, that people at Symantec should to my advice explain, is that now NAV 2003 main screen says that the subscription period ends at 2010, August 10.
Definitely the May versions of Intelligent Updater can be renamed Idiot Crasher.
After two weeks of ridiculous posts by Symantec employers, after the e-mail offering a $50 coupon, I think that at Symantec they are starting to sleep over the success of their deliberate sabotage of NAV2002/2003.
I don't want to be biased againts them: Even admitting that they can stop to support older versions, what has been disgusting is that they didn't posted any warning on the risk that the updates would crash these old versions. They could have kept a by far better elegant image if they were so kind to insert a version check into the Idiot Crasher, when launched, saying something similar to this:
"Starting with version 20100511, Intelligent updater will not update anymore versions 2003 and older of NAV - customers using these products are encouraged to upgrade to newer versions. People with a valid subscription for these products will get a discount for upgrading of the amount paid for the renewal".
In such a way, Symantec would have kept her elegance, customers unable or not willing to upgrade should have the possibility to continue to use their products with the latest (and last) VDF dated may 2010.
My grandfather, who was producing and selling a marvelous red italian wine was always saying:
"In the good years, offer the best glasses of wine saying to the customers they are lucky, and ask the right price; in the bad years, advice your customers that wine that season is not as desired, offering a free glass BEFORE selling it to them, and ask the right price. Be sure, next year they will come again. And they will come with friends to buy your wine!"
Grand grandfather!
Symantec Co., please, take him as an example!!
cpt63 (Italy).
So this is what I get for trusting Norton again:
I tried to get my $ 50 coupon, instead I got the following answer from Norton:
I gave up waiting and downloaded Avast! free edition from cnet. I first turned NAV 2003 auto-ptotect off so they won't interfere with each other, but otherwise left NSW 2003 and NIS 2003 installed.
I checked out the NIS 2010 product page, but Win2k isn't listed, so no help for me there...
I think I'm going to do the same.
Surprisingly, I'm reading good things about Microsoft Essentials, as good or even better than Avast (less issues), at least for home use. Real time protection and free as well. Anyone have any comments?
fredyg wrote:
So this is what I get for trusting Norton again:
I tried to get my $ 50 coupon, instead I got the following answer from Norton:
Welcome back to Norton Support.Thank you for providing us with the information, however I regret to say that we are not authorized to provide you with the coupon codes. So I request you to reply to the same email from which you have received the below email stating to offer you a $50 Norton product coupon. Or please post a new message mentioning your email address, country of origin, operating system, and your installed Norton product version to the Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus Bulletin board. Please do accept my sincere apologize for all the trouble that you had to go through.So, what is going on ????
If you have a current subscription, send Dave_Coleman a private message and include the information that they requested -- email address, country of origin, operating system, and your installed Norton product version.
Reese : Adding it to the sticky on this subject at the beginning of this forum or even make a seperate one, would make a good impression to all those angry subscribers and to others reading this forum.
I think we passed the "making a good impression" threshold about a week and a half ago!
Methinks it might be "Letter To The Editor" time at a couple of choice PC publications.
I'm STILL running Windows 98SE on a computer around here somewhere; I realize I can't get updates anymore, but at least Microsoft didn't BREAK my system one day, without notice, without a fix.
It's apparent that Notron has no intention of putting resources into patching this self-inflicted wound.
As pointed out, Microsoft Security Essentials has received a number of very favourable reviews, and it's free and quick to install.
Time to put it through some tests.
Thanks for the coupon offer, but that's a bit like BP offering a gas discount to Gulf area residents.
I looked at MSE but it requires XP or newer 
It's clear to me that Symantec has sabotaged NAV 2003 either deliberately or by no longer checking if the Updater would trash the older version. I'm not happy about this, and the way that Symantec has gone about providing advanced warning and support for this problem stinks, but the product is over 7 years old.
I'm trying Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) on all XP based "secondary" computers (I support 10 users on over 10 computers, and Symantec's defintion of a "user license " is tied to only one computer). MSE's one "flaw" that I have seen reported is that the scan times for a full scan are very long. It also does not have a feature that NAV 2010 has that I really like. NAV 2010 will do a weekly full scan when it detects the computer is idle - it's a bit more flexible/intelligent in its scheduling.
Unfortunately, I still have some Windows 2000 machines, and MSE does not say it supports Win2K. Given that Win2K is going off MS support in July 2010, this makes sense for Microsoft's free product.
NAV 2010 is not a perfect product. It does not support Win2K. The performance hit on XP seems to be minimal - that is deserving of applause - and it does more to protect you than NAV 2003 - but it reports deleting (fixing) tracking cookies like something major has happened on your machine. This is extremely stupid, and a terible security practice. After a few weeks of seeing this message "NAV has fixed NN security problems on your machine" and investigating by looking at details, users will no longer pay attention when the see that all it's reporting is deleting tracking cookies. This is an excellent example of the classic "boy who cried wolf" fable. I assume this is being done for marketing reasons (NAV 2010 is proudly telling you how much work they've been doing in the background - it must be worth paying for....).
Bottom line - remove NAV 2003 and try Microsoft Security Essentials. It is surprisingly good, and I would bet it is just fine for stable machines which have users who are security concious (are very cautious about the links they click and emails they open).
Absolutely correct. The NAV Auto Protect software has now become badly behaved. It should be fixed or removed.
Also my situation exactly. When the critical error message comes up and redirects to the Symantec web site, it gives the "no thanks, continue to the knowledge base" option, it should just plain say that this product is no longer supported instead of me chasing around for half the day trying to run the fix. It comes back with running as an administrator. I AM LOGGED IN AS AN ADMINISTRATOR but it continues to come up with the same error. Why doesn't Symantec just own up and tell the user right then and there this product is no longer supported. I've searched through this complete thread and it's just a waste of time. Symantec has no intention of fixing this so they should be up front about it. I will be slowly migrating off all Symantec's products one at a time as this is extremely poor customer service. Even Microsoft advertises an end of life date.
So basically we are being told, it's our fault for not buying new equipment to keep up with their products. Nice work. Lost me as a customer and will never pay again for a norton product and will tell everyone i know, and tell them to tell everyone they know to steer clear of norton products because all they want is your money and the don't give a **bleep** if you don't have it. my system was fine before the updates it's YOUR screwup that caused it.
RedMachine1972 wrote:So basically we are being told, it's our fault for not buying new equipment to keep up with their products. Nice work. Lost me as a customer and will never pay again for a norton product and will tell everyone i know, and tell them to tell everyone they know to steer clear of norton products because all they want is your money and the don't give a **bleep** if you don't have it. my system was fine before the updates it's YOUR screwup that caused it.
Could you please point me to any message from a Norton Staffer -- names in red -- in which they have said anything approaching this? I don't recollect any such statement from them although users here have inferred this but again that's not the same. True they have pointed out that from 2006 on you are entitled to free upgrades of the software to match the current defences and they have also offered a substantial rebate to users -- is that such a horrible thing for them to do?
Norton have said that they are working to resolve this on XP machines and I've never known them to state or imply anything untrue.
Everyone seems to believe they did it on purpose but I prefer the well established principle contained in "Occam's Razor" -- that the simplest solution out of many is most likely the correct one and the simplest solution is that bleep happens.
When you consider the complexity of malware attacks these days and as a result the complexity of defending against them -- and Norton have told us that new attacks are now running at 15,000 a day it amazes me that anyone should think that programs released in 2002 should still run at all and to expect them to run efffectively against modern attacks is asking too much.
You are correct to point out that no Norton/Symantec employee said any of those things, though some could be inferred by even a reasonable person, hostility and frustration aside.
This statement, however, is absurd:
"...it amazes me that anyone should think that programs released in 2002 should still run at all and to expect them to run efffectively against modern attacks is asking too much."
I have software FAR older than that and it still runs; my Norton Antivirus worked until just a few weeks ago, when an update to the virus definitions broke it.
So we were not asking too much until a month ago, but now our expectations are unreasonable?
Amazing is not the word that comes to mind here...
zontar wrote:This statement, however, is absurd:
"...it amazes me that anyone should think that programs released in 2002 should still run at all and to expect them to run efffectively against modern attacks is asking too much."
I have software FAR older than that and it still runs;
But there aren't loads of devious people out there continually trying to circumvent your "FAR older software".
zontar,
Thanks for accepting the main point I was making.
<< I have software FAR older than that and it still runs; my Norton Antivirus worked until just a few weeks ago, when an update to the virus definitions broke it. >>
So do we all, I'm sure.
I'm running under WIN 7 32 bit an HP SJ5P scanner that was launched for Windows 95 and using an Adaptec 19160 scsi controller neither of which have WIN 7 drivers from their manufacturers. They run with XP drivers and WIN 98 scanning software. But if I buy a new laptop or desktop (as distinct from building the latter) it will almost certainly come with WIN 7 64 bit and that equipment will not run because there are no signed drivers. I'll replace it and I'll have a much better scanner; I won't blame HP or Adaptec for this.
mdturner makes the critical point -- as I did "expect them to run efffectively against modern attacks" -- not that it is old software but that there are people out there trying to attack your computer and the older software (and especially on WIndows 98 the limited memory support) cannot handle the newer definitions needed. Norton have said that they are working to see if they can adapt anything so that the definitions will work with the older software under XP but cannot do this for Windows 98.
Given that you can buy a bundle of NIS 2010 and Norton Utilities for a net cost of $0 if you check the weekend flyers and are in the USA then perhaps it is time to upgrade; if your system will handle the newer software and definitions.
If not, then as I said *bleep* happens.
My thoughts:
1. The absolute, minimally acceptable outcome must be a working version of NAV 2002/2003 after all updates are applied, even if it means that the last update is 5/10/2010. I don't think it's unreasonable to demand that no update ever break a bought product. This applies to any product, whether we're talking abou NAV, Windows, or anything else.
2. Has anyone tried MSE with Win2k? We know it's not supported, but do we know if it works anyway?
3. I'm currently trying avast! free edition on my Win2k laptop. It seems to work very well, but one major annoyance is that it pops up a status window EVERY TIME YOU BOOT, seemingly to nag me into buying their professional version. Unfortunately for them I'm a coder by trade and it took me all of an hour to write a startup app to close it the first time it opens. (hint to software vendors: I don't react well to deliberate annoyances. I tend to see them as declarations of war).