Norton Online Safety Monitor is being disabled

I have safety minder installed on two laptops - one belonging to my son, the other to my daughter.  My son's laptop is running WinXP, the daughter is using Vista 32-bit.  For whatever reason, Norton Safety Minder is being disabled regularly and not restarting with reboot.  Both of them have non-admin accounts on their machines.  Neither of them would know how to disable services via Task Manager or anything like that.  I've reinstalled Safety Minder multiple times to no avail.  What's the point of having a monitoring tool that can be disabled so easily?  I've been using this tool for a few months now and it seems to be more trouble than it's worth.  If I were paying for this, I would be a lot more upset.

 

I have searched for this problem on the boards and all the solutions seem to be resolved via private messages.  If there is an answer, could you please post it publicly? 

They do not.  as far as they know, it’s the “little annoying dog” program.  they don’t even know that it’s connected to a web site.

jaychange,

 

What kind of Anti-Virus or Security product is installed on the kids' PCs? 

Do both PCs get disabled regularly? 

When they get disabled, do you still see the NSM icon, a paw image, available in the system tray?

 

 

Thanks,

Katie

the XP laptop is running Norton AV.

 

the vista laptop is running Avast AV.

 

I do not have custody of the kids so I can't check every time it's disabled.  However, in looking at my daughter's laptop this past weekend, I noticed that the paw icon was not in the system tray, which caused me to re-install the app.  I have no reason to believe that this would not be the case other times. 

Do both of PCs get disabled regularly or just one of them?

 

Thanks,

Katie

As far as I know, both of them regularly get disabled.  my son is primarily using a desktop machine that his mother just purchased (which does not have Norton on it) so he doesn’t use his laptop as much.  my daughter uses her laptop all the time and the app regularly fails to load.

jaychange,

 

I have the following information from your posts. Please correct me if I'm wrong. 

 

Daughter: Vista & Avast AV

Son: XP & Norton AV (but he doesn’t use the PC often, so I assume you don’t have much information on how NSM get disabled) 

 

For your Daughter's PC, Avast AV is currently incompatible with the Norton Safety Minder and we are working to resolve a solution. 

 

If you like to get more information on Avast AV, please read the following link. It’s not the same issue as you are experiencing, but it’s about Avast compatibility.

 

 http://community.norton.com/norton/board/message?board.id=OnlineFamily&thread.id=904&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

 

 

Thanks,

Katie

I will replace Avast with something else.  is there a list of AV products I should not use?

jaychange,

 

Please check the “Using Norton Safety Minder with other Security products” link under Quick Links at http://community.norton.com/norton/board?board.id=OnlineFamily

 

Thanks,

Katie

  

any ideas why my son’s laptop seems to suffer the same issue?

jaychange,

 

You mentioned "my son is primarily using a desktop machine that his mother just purchased (which does not have Norton on it) so he doesn't use his laptop as much." 

 

Does it mean he uses his mother's PC without NSM installed, not his laptop where NSM get disabled?

 

Thanks,

Katie

Correct.  however, I have noticed when he was using his laptop, the same thing would happen.

jaychang,

 

Since he doesn't use his laptop with NSM installed often, I'm not sure if he has used it lately since we released the new update for the Windows Client.  Please make sure he uses his laptop where has NSM installed with the latest version number 1.1.0.21 to see if the issue still occurs. 

 

Thanks,

Katie

I have safety minder installed on two laptops - one belonging to my son, the other to my daughter.  My son's laptop is running WinXP, the daughter is using Vista 32-bit.  For whatever reason, Norton Safety Minder is being disabled regularly and not restarting with reboot.  Both of them have non-admin accounts on their machines.  Neither of them would know how to disable services via Task Manager or anything like that.  I've reinstalled Safety Minder multiple times to no avail.  What's the point of having a monitoring tool that can be disabled so easily?  I've been using this tool for a few months now and it seems to be more trouble than it's worth.  If I were paying for this, I would be a lot more upset.

 

I have searched for this problem on the boards and all the solutions seem to be resolved via private messages.  If there is an answer, could you please post it publicly?