I too am having the same issue. This is now less than 24 hours away from December and yet it's still not fixed. When the hell is Symantec going to fix this? I could care less that it found 30 cookies and fixed them. HELLO, that's why I told it to automatically fix tehm. I don't need to know 20 times a day that it found some MINOR info and fixed it.
Does Symantec care about their customers or have they gotten so big that they think can get away with not addressing issues? If it's not fixed soon I will revert back to my 2011 subscription since I still had almost a year left. This 2012 version STINKS!!!
I agree This needs fixing quick. my subscription is up early January if it’s not fixed I will move to another product I have 10 computers at work running Microsoft Security Essentials and don’t get any annoying notifications at all.
It's been over a month since LynnH (Symantec Employee) promised that a fix for this problem is coming.
Can we get some current status .... any idea of the approximate timeframe when a fix will be rolled out??
One should have the option to disable pop-up messages from NIS that say a background scan completed and no problems were found.
This is obviously not a major problem, but is an annoyance that can easily be solved by providing an option to enable/disable those messages that tell the user no problem was found. Those users who wish to see such messages can continue to do so, and those who consider those messages to be an annoyance can choose to disable the messages (that say no problem was found).
Unfortunately, I can't give any details as to when the next update will be released. I understand that it's frustrating for you, and it's equally as frustrating for us. But things change, compatibility issues crop up, and schedules need to adjust accordingly. That said, once we're able to give out schedule information, we'll let you know.
There are a bunch of items which are on the remedy list and some are more important than others. I have many of the same problems as you, but staying the course is the key. I would rather have Symantec take the time (within reason) and fully QA these fixes than release something that just "might" work. I think that all of you have done the right thing by posting these problems in the forum for the developers to address and they are doing just that.
Just think of all the OS'es and their respective configurations - both software and hardware - it's almost insanity.
Patience will be rewarded.
That's why I volunteer my time here. I want a super quality product to use and don't think that jumping to another vendor's product is the answer. They have their own issues as well.
Well, patience goes only so far. In today's Business and Marketing oriented world, the customer has the right to get a FULL refund if not satisfied with something.
And also, I'd like to point out that Quick Scan ran even while I was making a full back-up of my system. Slowed everything down, ran again when I continued the back-up job every day for the next 3 days and the total time spent backing-up was 27.5 hours
Have you tried configuring Quiet Mode to suspend Norton background tasks when your backup software is running (in NIS 2011, it's Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Silent Mode Settings | Quiet Mode Detection Of | User-Specified Programs | Configure)? See here for more information on Silent Mode and Quiet Mode.
I think the issue being discussed in this thread is a problem with the pop-up notifications that continue to alert users that these idletime tasks are running in the background (Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Norton Task Notification) even when the setting is turned off in NIS 2012. The Idle Quick Scan and Norton Insight tasks can't be permanently disabled in the configuration settings like other idletime tasks (see Performance | Norton Tasks for a list of tasks), but they can still be temporarily suspended for up to a full day by right-clicking on the Norton icon in the system tray and choosing Turn On Silent Mode.
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Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2011 v. 18.6.0.29 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 8.0.0 HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
I won't ask for a refund, but I also won't be renewing Norton Anti-virus when my subscription expires. There are too many good free programs to have to be aggravated by a program that costs money.
I have never seen such a lackadaiscal response to a program bug.
The issue/bug that I reported involves getting annoying pop-up messages stating that a background scan has been completed and NO PROBLEMS WERE FOUND. Getting such superfluous pop-up messages (stating that no problems were found) should be made OPTIONAL. Some customers might want to get such pop-ups, and others might not.
On September 15, 2011, LynnH (Symantec Employee) stated this: "Thank you for reporting the issue. We will fix it in a future release of NIS and NAV."
TWO MONTHS LATER (November 9, 2011), LynnH stated: "...We have identified the issue and have a fix for it. However, the fix was not part of the latest release, but we are working to make it part of an upcomming major release...."
It has now been THREE MONTHS since Symantec has been aware of this problem, and ONE MONTH since we were told that Symantec has a fix.
How difficult can it be to make such pop-ups optional????
Yes, Tony Weiss is correct that all fixes must be tested and that takes time. But making these pop-up messages optional is not a complex change, and one expects that a company with Symantec's resources and talent could roll-out a simple fix like this within THREE MONTHS of it being reported.
Yes, Atomic_Blast is right in that there are other items on the remedy list that are more important than making superfluous pop-up messages optional .... but it's been THREE MONTHS since Symantec has been aware of this problem.
Symantec: how about some current status? Approximately how long will we have to wait for this problem to be fixed? I'm not asking for a specific date ... just an approximate timeframe (one month?, three months?, six months?, one year?).
Though I know it is frustrating with these pop-up's (for me as well) I do know that Symantec cares about issues that customers report, incluiding this one.
When Symantec talks about "next major update" it is one which is not just an inline minor patch but rather one which bumps the version number also. Major updates such as this takes more time because it is not just this one fix but also many others which have significantly more test impact than just this one.
Symantec rarely commits any dates for major updates like this because things are just too fluid and a problem during testing of even one of the fixes going into that major update causes a delay with all the other fixes targeted for that update as well.
I have hope this will be fairly soon but that is just my personal opinion and did not come from Symantec.
Some questions (that are probably only answerable by someone from Symantec):
1. Why must such a simple fix (that by Symantec's admission has been available since November 9) have to wait for a major release? Many fixes are released in between major releases ... why not this one? How complex could this simple fix be ... it should merely establish a new option that allows the user to either allow or bypass superfluous pop-ups from being displayed. A single line of code could then handle testing the state of the option and bypassing or displaying the pop-up ... something like "if not bypass-option then display pop-up". Not rocket science. Yes, the fix would have to be tested, but the fix has been available for a month ... that should have been enough time to thoroughly test sucn a simple change.
2. I understand the software development process. Companies do not like to publish specific release dates well in advance for the reasons you cited ... but companies often provide timeframes for upcoming releases. Every release has a project plan, and that plan includes an expected timeframe (if not a specific date) for the release. All I'm asking for is an approximate timeframe for when this fix will be made available (if necessary, Symantec can include the usual set of caveats). Right now, we only know that the fix will be "part of an upcomming release" ... right now we do not know for sure that this fix will even be part of the next release. Some status from Symantec would be appreciated.
I will ask Symantec to respond but I know that they will not commit to a release date. Perhaps they can confirm that it will be in the "next" update though so I will make the request.
I am actually a software engineer myself and I have seen several cases where I know the fix itself is actually quite simple and it still had to be released as part of a major update because of how it changed certain files that would cause the program to fail internal validation for things such as checksums and so forth. As I understand it there are certain program files which cannot simply be dropped in as a minor update as an individual file but rather must be included as part of a more comprehensive program update. I suspect this is one of those cases.
I will make a request that Symantec post to this thread with any more information they are able to share.
Please see my comments in blue. Let me know if you have any further questions or concerns.
Regards,
Tony
geek47 wrote:
@AllenM,
Thanks for your response.
Some questions (that are probably only answerable by someone from Symantec):
1. Why must such a simple fix (that by Symantec's admission has been available since November 9) have to wait for a major release? Many fixes are released in between major releases ... why not this one? How complex could this simple fix be ... it should merely establish a new option that allows the user to either allow or bypass superfluous pop-ups from being displayed. A single line of code could then handle testing the state of the option and bypassing or displaying the pop-up ... something like "if not bypass-option then display pop-up". Not rocket science. Yes, the fix would have to be tested, but the fix has been available for a month ... that should have been enough time to thoroughly test sucn a simple change.
TW: The complexity of the fix has little to do with the situation; it has a lot to do with Quality Assurance and maximizing the update for as many customers as possible. Our Quality Assurance process is one that we take very seriously, as I'm sure you know. We provide security to millions of people worldwide, and we need to make sure that it doesn't break anything on their systems -- not our products, 3rd party products, operating systems, other languages, etc. We have thorough processes for ensuring compatibility while making the fix still effective.
Additionally, I think we can agree that there are a few different categories of updates. If the issue is a matter of security, we will urgently release the update, as shown in the past. We can also agree that, as annoying as this issue can be, it is not a security-related issue. As such, we prefer to maximize the number of fixes that customers receive from a product update when dealing with non-urgent issues.
2. I understand the software development process. Companies do not like to publish specific release dates well in advance for the reasons you cited ... but companies often provide timeframes for upcoming releases. Every release has a project plan, and that plan includes an expected timeframe (if not a specific date) for the release. All I'm asking for is an approximate timeframe for when this fix will be made available (if necessary, Symantec can include the usual set of caveats). Right now, we only know that the fix will be "part of an upcomming release" ... right now we do not know for sure that this fix will even be part of the next release. Some status from Symantec would be appreciated.
TW: This is always a difficult one. My experience with giving out any type of timeframe has always resulted in angry customers. I'm not a person who is prone to writing in absolutes, so using the word "always" is very deliberate. There is always a misunderstanding, always an expectation that is not met regarding the schedule, and always an angry customer who expected a release "sometime in May" to be on May 1st at 12:01 AM (see any thread about Firefox updates, even ones where we release within hours of the Firefox udpate). Additionally, there are times that schedules change, even from when we planned them. They don't change arbitrarily, but rather for reasons mentioned in my reply to #1. It would be irresponsible for us to communicate either a timeframe that might change due to unknown circumstances or to release an update according to schedule that could potentially cause harm. Do we stick to our committment of schedule? Or to our committment of excellence? We prefer the latter, which means that our schedule information remains internal.
While I know this isn't likely to be a satisfactory answer for you, I think at this point we can "agree to disagree" on this subject. You've been polite in presenting your side of the issue, and we've tried to do the same. However, our policy on release dates is not likely to change.
I understand how you feel (seriously) but the remediation process is more complicated than you think, IMHO.
Tony Weiss does present a real-world explanation of the items which must be taken into consideration when
you are doing business with a company that has a plethora of products - each one deserves the same type of
treatment.
Have you tried Setting Silent Mode on for 1 day (maximum setting) and see if this might be a temporary workaround
for this problem? If not, please do so. If it doesn't work, we have at least given things a try.
I still maintain that you should stay the course, as the other products out there from other vendors (as previously mentioned) probably have their own share of problems. At least the pop-ups are not compromising the security of your computer.
Could you guarantee that you would be so safe and happy with another vendor?
I've been there and have come back here. That tells me something.
Thank you for your detailed response. While I understand Symantec's reluctance to provide an approximate timeframe for the next "major" release of NIS, as you said, we may just have to "agree to disagree" on this. Hopefully the fix for this pop-up annoyance will be in the "next" release, and hopefully, the next "major" release will occur before NIS 2013 :)
With your indulgence, could you please pass this request to the developers/architects ...
Whenever possible, when making changes that affect the User Interface (especially pop-up messages, and especially pop-up messages that say "no problems found"), please please make those pop-ups optional.
Atomic_Blast,
Thanks for your help and suggestions.
I'm not sure Silent Mode is an effective workaround.
Yes, it would result in surpressing pop-ups .... but my understanding of Silent Mode is that (when Silent Mode is active) all alerts and all background processes are suspended. I don't want to suspend the background processes (i.e., scans) because they help to keep ones PC secure, and I don't want to surpress any alert that might warn me of a possible problem .... I just want to (permanently) surpress the superfluous pop-ups that say "no problems found". Hopefully, the fix that Symantec is working on will make those superfluous pop-ups optional.
As far as "staying the course" .... I am a long-time Symantec customer (back to the days of Peter Norton) and do not plan on changing products because of this issue. As both you and Tony have mentioned (and I agree), these pop-ups do not compromise the security provided by NIS.... they are only an annoyance .... but hopefully an annoyance that will soon be fixed (i.e., long before NIS 2013 is rolled out)!
The issue I have (Norton Antivirus 2012) with this is not having the option to not have Quick Scan start up everytime my computer goes idle. I have no problem with the Live Update doing its thing automatically but do have a problem not being able to control when Norton wants to scan my computer. I'm perfectly capable of doing this on my own, I don't need big brother Norton looking over my shoulder telling me it doesn't trust my judgement so it's going to take it out of my hands. If this doesn't get fixed (to have options to disable any of the background activities individually) I also will not be renewing my subscription when it expires. There are just too many good antivirus programs out there to have to put up with this.
I think that in this day and age it would not be very wise to rely on oneself to do the scans. By the time you get around to doing it, you could already be infected with a virus. The quick scans have already been fixed by Norton, so they don't really intrude in every day computing anymore.
Anyway, this thread is not about quick scans, but the accompanying pop-up message. As you may have read, this will be fixed also
