I just recently purchased a brand new Alienware Area 51 desktop computer which was delivered April 14. After installing Norton Core Security and subsequent patches, anytime I run LiveUpdate, the computer hangs at the last update, and the only option is to hard-shutdown the computer by keeping the power button pressed. I also worked with someone from the Norton Core team, and they were able to help me, but only temporarily. A couple of hours later, the next set of LiveUpdate updates brought the problem back again.
Here are the sequence of events:
- (4/14) First startup of desktop and setting up login
- (4/14) Windows and Alienware updates
- (4/14-4/15) Installing the following software - Norton Core Security
- (4/15) Installed MS Office, Firefox, Chrome, WinRAR, HP Printer, VLC Player
- (4/15) When I started it up next day, Norton LiveUpdate caused it to hang (screen and everything completely frozen)
- (4/15) Let it run for over 1 hour, still frozen
- (4/15) Hard-shutdown of computer, startup and tried LiveUpdate again; kept trying, computer hung every time (tried between 10-15 times)
- (4/15) Uninstalled Norton Core Security
- (4/15) Computer worked fine when Norton Security was not installed
- (4/15) Reinstalled Norton Computer Security - installation and patches successful
- (4/15) LiveUpdate caused computer to hang again
- (4/16) Same problems next day; did a complete RESET of the computer
- (4/16) Computer worked fine
- (4/16) Installed MS Office, computer worked fine
- (4/16) Installed Norton Security Plus - installation successful
- (4/16) LiveUpdate caused computer to hang again
- (4/16) Disabled "Automatic LiveUpdate" to stop the process from inadvertently causing computer to hang
- (4/16) Computer worked fine
- (4/16) Contacted Norton Support, worked with Norton Core support (Case# xxxxxxxx ) [private information removed by Admin]
- (4/16) Norton Support did the following: uninstalled, deleted all common program files, reinstalled - LiveUpdate still causing problems
- (4/16) Norton Support did the following: Removed Norton using the removal tool (RnR), then reinstalled using the latest Norton Security Backup (NSBU)
- (4/16) Installation was successful and LiveUpdates were successful and didn't cause computer to hang or crash
- (4/16) A couple of hours later, new LiveUpdate started causing the computer to hang again; it seems like a final Auto-Protect setting in the LiveUpdate or something is causing this? Can't say for sure.
- (4/17) Today, I have disabled the "Automatic LiveUpdate" and the computer has been running for over an hour without hanging or crashing
I'm really desperate now - it seems not having Norton Core software is the only surefire way to keep my computer running. Even Norton Core support were not able to help.
Hi.
Thanks for the update. Hopefully you can enjoy your new computer and our software without any more problems.
T McCormick
UPDATES:
Over 10 days now, no issues.
I've stopped wincing in dread when running LiveUpdate.
Thanks TMcCormick & SoulAsylum.
I'll give it another last week, just to be sure.
UPDATES:
It's been over 5 days now, and still no failure.
Cautiously optimistic...
Hi
That is good to know. I think this only works on windows 10.
Thanks
Tim
Hi TMcCormick,
UPDATES:
3.5 days now.
Going ok so far. Not encountered any instance where there were more than or equal to 5 updates. The most updates there have been in one go so far have been 3.
I'll observe for a couple of weeks, and try to provide updates every 2-3 days.
After a few weeks, if this doesn't pop up again, I think we can call it closed.
Regards,
Manish
Hi Everyone.
Thanks for responding. I see. It might have fixed it. I agree, give it a few weeks to see what happens.
Thanks
T McCormick
STAR CRT
I am assuming that since there is still activity on this thread, that flashing the BIOS did not make any difference and running liveupdate is still causing the system to lock up. Is that correct?
Hi TMcCormick,
I haven't seen any issues in the past 1.5 days after I reinstalled the application and updated the drivers.
However, the reason I'm currently waiting is that even after the last time I did an RnR Remove and then NSBU-install, it worked for a little over a day and then started failing.
One thing I noticed is that if it's just 1 or 2 updates, the LU seems to finish fine; it's when there are 5, 6 or more updates that it causes the crash at the final update (5/5, 6/6 or some other variation).
I haven't seen it so far, and fingers crossed I don't see it again.
Regards,
Manish
Hi.
Some of these "unresolved" cases I worked with the customer directly and we resolved the issue behind the scenes.
There was a fix for the symefasi.sys crash that resolved the BSOD. It was listed as fixed in the Hot Issues and Fixes list last year, but i don't see it now.
For Everyone, if the problem did not go away after flashing the BIOS, then it could be the same issue that is reported in this thread.
https://community.norton.com/en/forums/norton-security-service-stops-constantly
I am assuming that since there is still activity on this thread, that flashing the BIOS did not make any difference and running liveupdate is still causing the system to lock up. Is that correct?
Thanks
T McCormick
STAR CRT
My bad again. Gotta love the windows clip board. Pasting the wrong link. I removed that link since its in a private area where Guru's and Admins only have access. Apologies. The 2nd link is the one I wanted you to actually see to compare.
Cheers
Thanks SoulAsylum.
I get an "Access Denied" when I try to access the first link - https://community.norton.com/en/forums/x299-chipsets-and-bsod-symefasi64sys
Anything you can do about that? I can't even request access to it or something. I just get a simple boilerplate " You are not authorized to access this page." text response.
Everybody - Here are some threads where other x299 chipset users have issues. NONE have been resolved completely. And their issues are 100% Norton's issue.
https://community.norton.com/en/forums/norton-security-causing-x299-chipset-motherboards-crash
Cheers
Indeed as I do as well. That was a typo on my part, should have said 4.7
I have .NET Framework 4.7.1 according to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/migration-guide/how-to-determine-which-versions-are-installed
See below:
Everybody verify that you have ONLY .NET 4.5 enabled on your system.
Cheers
Hi Everyone.
Thank you for trying the BIOS update. Without the signature WHEA bugcheck, I am not certain how much a difference it makes.
I can't really comment on who is at fault because we don't see a memory.dmp associated with the running of LU on this computer.
For those with the WHEA bugcheck, updating the BIOS was the solution. However, for some systems it exposed a different Bugcheck. For customers who got the WHEA crash running LU, this seemed to fix it. In this case, I am not sure.
Thanks
T McCormick
By the way guys, I seem to have found an additional bug for the comments threads.
If you post a comment, you have a counter for 60 minutes in which you can make edits.
But after posting the comment, if you click on the "Kudos" button/link for anybody, the counter switches from minutes to seconds, and every other second it will switch from 60 minutes to 60 seconds.
So, the first second you will see 58 seconds left, then 3597 seconds left, then 56 seconds left, then 3595 second, until it reaches 1 second and then locks your post from further edits.
So you only have 1 minute left to edit if you click on Kudos after posting something.
You can get around this by refreshing the page, at which point the counter will switch back to 50+ minutes left.
I found this out when I first gave Kudos to SoulAsylum and floplot a day or 2 ago after a new post, and then today when I did the same for TMcCormick.
Hi SoulAsylum,
After TMcCormick's suggestion, I went ahead and manually updated the BIOS and other drivers that weren't up-to-date.
Thanks for pointing me to the Intel center - the only drivers that are still not up-to-date so far are:
- Intel® Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0
I'll go ahead and update that as well.
That said, I respectfully disagree with you on the 'actual issue' being the x299 chipset.
By now, I have installed several other applications on this system - none of them have caused any issues so far. Not even a minor one like an application crash or anything.
The only application where I'm experiencing issues is with Norton Security.
And, as a Software Engineer myself, I would like to say that it is the responsibility of the software developer/team/org to ensure their application is compatible on every environment (hardware + OS) it will be installed on, not the responsibility of the environment to switch to support various software being installed on it (Lawrence Conlin said it better with his example of switching to AVG and not experiencing any issues).
I myself have been a Norton customer for more than 10 years (before that I used ZoneAlarm) and ever since the Norton Core, I have experienced one issue after another until January of this year (when it finally seems to have gotten resolved).
I would like to keep on using Norton Security as I have mostly had great experiences with it, but I can only leave my new system unprotected for so long.
Currently the Norton installation is running ok, but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. 
Regards,
Manish
Now that we have a "hidden" reason for what could be the actual issue there are other threads where the x299 chipsets have been causing havoc for ages. All have gone unattended without a solution. Some are now closed from further comment: https://community.norton.com/en/forums/bsod-symefasi64sys
https://community.norton.com/en/forums/norton-security-causing-x299-chipset-motherboards-crash
https://community.norton.com/en/comment/7591981#comment-7591981
Probably wouldn't hurt to have a look at this site for the certified drivers on the system directly from Intel.
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/123613/Intel-Core-i9-7900X-X-series-Processor-13-75M-Cache-up-to-4-30-GHz-
Cheers
Hi TMcCormick,
Thanks for contacting me. I was contacted by someone from Norton Support called Sunil - he asked me to do a Remove Only via Norton RnR and then download the latest NSBU to install the software again, and then run LiveUpdates manually. I've already done this several times by now, though. Even so, today I went ahead and did it again.
Thanks for that heads-up about the BIOS though. I just went ahead and updated the BIOS firmware to 1.1.10. It came out on 3/21/2018.
I don't see BSODs. The LiveUpdates just brings the system to a dead stop - the screen completely freezes, anything that was running or being viewed on the screen will stop, no mouse movement, no keyboard actions, nothing.
I tried leaving it on once for close to an hour, but nothing. Even the screen turn-off after 10 minutes didn't happen. It's not as if the system becomes very slow - it just...ceases to function.
I don't see a memory.dmp file in the C:\Windows directory.
Regards,
M Patel
