I am a Norton user personally and am a developer with an API software that uses a Government website API and have been in business since 2004. We are a desktop program and have had AV issues in past but have been able to identify issues through Norton Logs and Quarantine. This past week with no code changes on our end two of our programs started crashing and we have isolated it from watching Process Manager that it is a Norton DLL (ArPotEx64.dll) causing the issue. There is nothing in Norton Security History or Quarantine. We have also tried to look at the Windows Crash Dump Logs but apparently Norton deletes those when a program is blocked.
“ArPotEx64.dll” is a Norton DLL file (Dynamic Link Library) that is part of the Norton suite of security products, specifically related to the Norton Download Manager, and can potentially cause program crashes if not handled correctly.
Here’s a more detailed explanation:
What it is:
It’s a DLL file, a type of file that contains code that can be used by other programs, and in this case, it’s a Norton-related DLL.
Location:
It’s located in the Norton Suite directory: C:\Program Files\Norton\Suite\ArPotEx64.dll.
Potential Issue:
It has been identified as a potential cause of program crashes, specifically when Norton Download Manager is involved.
Security Vulnerability:
A security advisory from Broadcom mentions a potential DLL loading issue in the Norton Download Manager, which could allow unauthorized execution if a malicious DLL is substituted.
How to address crashes:
If you are experiencing crashes related to this DLL, you may need to investigate the Norton Download Manager and ensure it’s functioning correctly, or consider contacting Norton support for assistance.
Note that I highlighted a security vulnerability in the AI overview. I will try to dig up more on that issue and post here for you.
May we ask what the version and build of Windows 11 you are running is? And what the version of your Norton installation is as well.
Also, do you have these files that are being developed excluded from all Norton scans in settings?
Another user is also having issues and reporting ArPotEx64.dll as the faulting module: Not specific to your issue but its something in common that leads toward the issue being something Norton needs to address and quickly.
We have several dozen users reporting the issue that either use AVAST or Norton but apparently they share an engine now. They have varying Windows operating systems and it does not affect all of our users. If we exclude the .exe everything works when exclude a parent directory it is hit or miss. Our program is a Click Once so each update generates a new install folder so with exclusions we can either exclude all click once which would make it vulnerable. We played around trying to do a wildcard exclusion for just the exe file but it did not appear to work We also scanned all of our EXE and dll with Norton and all were checked ok.