Again... I totally agree and understand your frustration. I can sense your outrage which is absolutely logical & reasonable. I cannot defend nor excuse vendor actions... I imagine my feelings would mirror your feelings. When I hit a big bump in the road using another vendor. I opted to explore other options. My point which I did not adequately express...your subscription grants you the use of the product. Unfortunately, your rights are limited to the use of the product...and adjunct support ..."As Is". Granted,10 years of loyalty should count toward receiving support that fully satisfies your expectations. I am truly sorry this issue has proven to be so persistent. We've all been there to some degree. Rare is the user that has not hit a hard bump in the road. As critical as Security is...you must remain proactive and take what ever steps are required to get you back to Secure. I sincerely hope you find a satisfactory resolution asap.
Thanks bjm_. It is nice to see someone understanding my situation. I actually like Norton, or did at least, and have it installed on all my computers. But like you pointed out, you have to keep your computer secure. Norton actually gets consistently higher reviews compared to McAfee and some of the others. Fortunately for me, alot of it has to do with resources and UI and not so much with actually how well it protects against viruses.
Norton/Syumantec reminds me of Dell. Dell used to have a stirling reputation for quality products and really excellent customer service. Today they have a reputation for having quality products, but service that is so bad that you should avoid buying their products. I had a Dell laptop and a 4 year service warranty. Every time I called support, I felt like pulling the hair out of my head. Their solution was always to reinstall the OS, similar to Norton's "You have a virus" excuse. It was never necessary, but that was what they would say when they could not figure anything out. So, when it was time for a new laptop, my starting point was "Anybody but Dell". Norton reminds me totally of them. Apparently there is a price to pay for that. If you google the following terms: "dell company profits plummet" and "dell layoffs" you can see that their chicken's are coming home to roost.
So for all of those upper management folks who thing that they are being really clever and saving the company boatloads of money with your crappy support all I can say is...... "Dust off that resume....and put it in a file with a date of about 12 to 18 months from now.... you will need it about that time.
Thanks bjm_. It is nice to see someone understanding my situation. ...
A lot of us understand your situation, particularly in regard to customer support. My only disagreement is with your certainly that it is perculiar to Norton.
I have experienced almost nothing but crappy customer service from practically any venue I have been seeking it from lately. It's just a bunch of mindless idiots following scripts and panicking because they are on a clock seeing how fast they get the problem resolved. They get paid beans; a lot of them don't speak American English (or whatever native language applies); they're just trying to pay for their apartments or put food on the table ... and they're just don't help.
If you find customer service that is better than I described, please let us know. I think we all wish you well.
re > So, when it was time for a new laptop, my starting point was "Anybody but Dell".
My experience with HP sure ain't been a walk in the park...so, I hear ya! All random scripted answers...from so called Techs with fixes that do not even pertain to the issue....I've learned....question everything I'm told and never follow their instruction. Every issue presented to HP has at least three answers...the right answer - the wrong answer - and the answer I always seem to get. Perform a destructive System Recovery. The info from all Support is only as good as the last rep you speak to. The next rep will always have a different fix. It's like they blindly reach into a bin and pull out nonsense. They all start the same insulting chant... I'm sorry and Don't worry. As mijcar pointed out - crappy customer service - is the norm. Not the exception.
Remember, I'm pulling for ya. We're all in this together! And remember, this fix is only temporary, unless it works. And remember, the handyman's secret weapon - duct tape.
I think the most problem by Norton / Symantec is a high level of arrogance and a low level of support (product knowledge of support and quality management). Not only in the English language room.
See post #407 as an example of German language support or Post #429.
I am not sure to use NIS for the future. I am only sure to use not more than one Norton product on my pc; catchword: ‘Norton Removal Tool’ (#407).
as most of you I was plagued by the 3039,1 problem and almost gave up. But since I'm a *very* bad loser, I tried and tried until I finally could solve the problem! At least in my case a malware/virus created a file in %systemroot%\system32 named "msxm192z.dll" and somehow damaged my MDAC component in Windows XP SP3.
Solution was: - Removed any malware/virus, using a number of different anti-virus tools and malwarebytes anti-malware (http://www.malwarebytes.org/) which did a great job. - Fixed problem in MDAC, by removing all registry-keys starting with "mdac" and then reinstalling it from the WXPSP3 CD (more details see here: http://www.macropool.com/en/download/mdac_xp_sp2.html). VERY IMPORTANT step: reboot system after fixing MDAC!
Now Norton 360 shows up with a green checkmark and I almost can't believe it.
as most of you I was plagued by the 3039,1 problem and almost gave up. But since I'm a *very* bad loser, I tried and tried until I finally could solve the problem! At least in my case a malware/virus created a file in %systemroot%\system32 named "msxm192z.dll" and somehow damaged my MDAC component in Windows XP SP3.
Solution was: - Removed any malware/virus, using a number of different anti-virus tools and malwarebytes anti-malware (http://www.malwarebytes.org/) which did a great job. - Fixed problem in MDAC, by removing all registry-keys starting with "mdac" and then reinstalling it from the WXPSP3 CD (more details see here: http://www.macropool.com/en/download/mdac_xp_sp2.html). VERY IMPORTANT step: reboot system after fixing MDAC!
Now Norton 360 shows up with a green checkmark and I almost can't believe it.
Hope this will help others!
-- workaholic
I am stunned! Do you mean Norton didn't cause the problem? Impossible!
Excellent job. And thanks for hanging in there and giving us the report.
workaholic, thanks for giving us that update. As I’ve noted previously in this thread, for the 2009 / N360 products, broken MDAC installations, for whatever reason, are the most common cause of this error. This shouldn’t be the cause of 3039,1 issues in the 2010 products though.
My subscription to NAV has expired and I won't be renewing. There are several reasons for this decision.
The first is Symantec's inability to come up with solution to this problem, even though being aware of it for well over a year.
The second is the abysmal quality of their offshore customer support.
Lastly, and the final straw, is that when going through the renewal process, the cost is $44.99 to renew, yet to buy the product new only costs $39.99. What's that all about?
It's obvious to me that Symantec doesn't care about customer satisfaction, customer feedback, or customer retention. So, I'll be voting with my wallet and looking elsewhere for my security needs.
It's sad, really. Symantec and Norton use to be names held in high regard within the computing community, but that has changed.
RawRats....It doesn't really matter. They have found a way to not only give extremely poor levels of support and to make huge amounts of money from it. This particular problem has existed since 2008 and it is now 2010. Do the math. For every person who has a problem, the support team transfers them to paid virus removal at $120. Think of how much money Symmantec has made over the last year by GIVING BAD SUPPORT! For every person like you (and me and my girlfriend) who has left Norton due to their poor quality of support, they have 10 people who throw away $120 by having their paid virus removal support look at their problem. As you may have experienced, they put you through to their paid support for reasons that any intelligent person could see has clearly nothing at all to do with having a virus. That makes it even more frustrating. They are not trained to properly support Norton, are probably paid next to nothing even in India's standards, and make the company tons of money by giving really bad support. If you owned a company that made big money as a result of delivering poor service, you would not change either.
Me?.... I am using McAfee and will never go back to Norton. Ever!
After fixing this error in NIS 2009 myself (with no alterations to MDAC) it's no wonder I avoid upgrading to NIS 2010 because SONAR is still broken in NIS 2010 and I would just beak again, I'm sure.
I'm gonna run out my subscription and go elsewhere for computer security even if I have to use Windows firewall and Windows anti virus.
If you pass the genuine Windows test you can get your choice free of the media player or anti virus, I played my cards right and took the antivirus plus Windows now has built in firewall, it only works for incoming but it's better than nothing.
I have to look into what Windows 7 offers in terms of Virus protection. I will probably use McAfee anyway, but it would be nice to see somebody cutting into 10 or 20% of their profits. As you might guess, yes, I am bitter about having to waste a good week of my time trying to deal with a product that is not working and a company trying to save money at my expense.
It is a shame that people that work at Symantec don't look at these discussion boards. Actually, I did see one person, Reese Anschultz, who I think is a Senior QA person, but her response really gives off that indication that they are not really not even aware too much about this issue.
If they were, you might have somebody at a higher level of support interested in working with the machines where this issue is easily reproducible. I am thinking I might build a website where people can give the reasons they left Norton.
