Hi, I think I've identified an incompatability between the fully up-to-date version of Norton Internet Security 2012 and the Tivo Server.exe component of the Tivo Desktop 2.8.3 software. For those without Tivo DVRs, Tivo Desktop is PC software made by Tivo that allows you to transfer TV recordings from the Tivo to PC and back. One of the components of the Tivo Desktop software is an app called Tivo Server.exe that runs as a Windows service in the background and allows the Tivo Desktop software to communicate with the DVR.
Anyway, several weeks ago, Tivo Server suddenly started to crash out of the blue. An error message pops up on the desktop that looks like this:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: TiVoServer.exe
Application Version: 1.5.306.263
Application Timestamp: 00000000
Fault Module Name: McMux.ax
Fault Module Version: 2.1.8936.61214
Fault Module Timestamp: 4581dc8a
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000012e4
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: fd00
Additional Information 2: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
Additional Information 3: fd00
Additional Information 4: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
I've been using Tivo Desktop with Norton Internet Security 2012 for over a year, basically since the latter came out in late 2011. The two have worked perfectly together so I had no reason at first to think NIS 2012 was the cause. I started the troubleshooting steps recommended on Tivo support sites such as reinstall Tivo Desktop, fiddled around with network router settings, rolling back recent Windows updates, etc. No luck, Tivo Server.exe continued to crash. Yesterday I decided to do a complete clean reinstall of 64-bit Windows 7 and start from scratch, adding software one by one to try to isolate the cause. I reinstalled Windows 7 and left it completely unpatched - no security patches or updates, not even the Windows 7 service pack, in order to rule out any recent Windows updates as a cause. I then installed video card drivers, using an old version that had worked seamlessly with NIS 2012 and Tivo Desktop, Apple's Bonjour software - a necessary third-party component - and finally, Tivo Desktop. I left Tivo Server running for several hours and it never crashed. However, minutes after installing and patching NIS 2012 to its current version, Tivo Server app started to crash and spit out the error message above.
Since Tivo Server and NIS 2012 used to work perfectly together, I can only speculate that a recent update to NIS 2012 is taking Tivo Server down. Can Symantec support investigate and see if they can replicate the issue and if so, fix it? I believe the problem is being caused by something deeper than the NIS firewall incorrectly blocking Tivo Server because Tivo Server continues to crash even if I temporarily disable the firewall. I also manually added every .exe component of Tivo Desktop to the firewall permissions list but Tivo Server continued to crash.
It's very frustrating after over a year of trouble-free compatability between NIS 2012 and Tivo Desktop. I really like NIS 2012 and would hate to give it up. I've considered switching to NIS 2013 but I'm not satisfied with the interface and features changes made to the current version of NIS. Besides, given the similarities between NIS versions, I wouldn't be surprised if NIS 2013 had the same problem.