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As a long-time user of Norton System Works and other Symantec products, over several versions, I should like to make a strong complaint. As a technical journalist, writing three regular columns for technical journals on IT/Internet matters, I'll publish my opinion as to my experience with your latest product.
Until recently, I have been using NSW2002 reasonably happily, set up to reduce the invasive properties to a minimum. Due to a HDD failure, I reinstalled Windows XP/SP2. To my surprise, after re-installing NSW, I received a message informing me that LiveUpdate is no longer supported, even though I bought the software less than 3 years ago and I updated my update subscription at the end of September 2005, just over 4 months ago. You therefore owe me for 8 months' subscription.
However, I bit the bullet and noticed you recommended I purchase a combo pack of Anti-Virus and Internet Security. After a lot of hunting around on your site, I found an upgrade to NSW 2006 and opted for the Premier version, which I ordered and downloaded.
After installation, LiveUpdate would not work. Following links, and various fruitless trials, uninstalling, clearing the registry of everything related to Norton, Symantec and LiveUpdate, reinstalling etc., over three whole days, and noting that this new software was ultra-invasive and quintupled the boot up time, I decided to give up. However, this was not before many serious attempts to resolve the problem, referring to many of your on-line documents, some of which were worse than useless. For example, in How to replace damaged LU files, Section 4, paragraph 5, it calls up to delete a file that does not exist and, later, replace it. It is unacceptable to offer this kind of "service".
On the morning of 7 February, I faxed your Irish offices requesting help, as you offer no on-line support. I received no answer, not even an acknowledgement. The same evening, I phoned your Irish office (expensive from here), only to suffer from a voice mail voice (difficult to understand and I had to do it twice to do so) saying that support could be obtained only from www.symantec.co.uk, which was identical to the web sites I looked at previously and offered no other phone or on-line support.
In the meanwhile, my Internet activities were open to a virus invasion. Fortunately, this was minimised by my firewall and anti-malware software (neither Norton/Symantec nor Microsoft), but that is not the point.
Yesterday afternoon, I decided on one last attempt. I uninstalled everything, I deleted all residues of Norton/Symantec/LiveUpdate that I could find, anywhere, (including over 300 residues in the registry after the uninstallation and which had no right to be left, if the uninstall software did its job properly). This did not work and I applied for a refund of my money, having uninstalled the software definitively.
Incidentally, at each new re-install, it came up with the Access Denied to C: message, indicating that your programmers could not even write the correct code for the protected Recycle Bin. This required manual correction, each time.
However, the surprise came this morning. Even though I had searched for and found everything I could and deleted it, when I started the computer up this morning, before booting into Windows, a screen came up to uninstall your GoBack files: this took four whole hours, during which time I could not use the computer. This is totally unacceptable.
As I decided that NSW had definitively become history - and all other Symantec software has been blacklisted from future purchases, I therefore sought anti-virus protection and defragging software (the two most important applications) elsewhere. I found one of each that appear to work at least as well your products, if the latter worked at all, and whose aggregate first-time cost is less than half the upgrade price for NSW Premier. Guess what? They work invisibly, non-invasively and with no significant increase of the booting time. And the AV had an automatic update, today, just a matter of hours after the initial installation, that took just a few minutes.
I'm an IT professional, having been a programmer (several high-level languages) of scientific instrumentation for many years. Never before have I had such problems with any type of software (and I hope never again!) and with such an execrable lack of manufacturer's support. It defies me that anyone who is computer-illiterate could handle such a situation.
I guess I've made my point.
Until recently, I have been using NSW2002 reasonably happily, set up to reduce the invasive properties to a minimum. Due to a HDD failure, I reinstalled Windows XP/SP2. To my surprise, after re-installing NSW, I received a message informing me that LiveUpdate is no longer supported, even though I bought the software less than 3 years ago and I updated my update subscription at the end of September 2005, just over 4 months ago. You therefore owe me for 8 months' subscription.
However, I bit the bullet and noticed you recommended I purchase a combo pack of Anti-Virus and Internet Security. After a lot of hunting around on your site, I found an upgrade to NSW 2006 and opted for the Premier version, which I ordered and downloaded.
After installation, LiveUpdate would not work. Following links, and various fruitless trials, uninstalling, clearing the registry of everything related to Norton, Symantec and LiveUpdate, reinstalling etc., over three whole days, and noting that this new software was ultra-invasive and quintupled the boot up time, I decided to give up. However, this was not before many serious attempts to resolve the problem, referring to many of your on-line documents, some of which were worse than useless. For example, in How to replace damaged LU files, Section 4, paragraph 5, it calls up to delete a file that does not exist and, later, replace it. It is unacceptable to offer this kind of "service".
On the morning of 7 February, I faxed your Irish offices requesting help, as you offer no on-line support. I received no answer, not even an acknowledgement. The same evening, I phoned your Irish office (expensive from here), only to suffer from a voice mail voice (difficult to understand and I had to do it twice to do so) saying that support could be obtained only from www.symantec.co.uk, which was identical to the web sites I looked at previously and offered no other phone or on-line support.
In the meanwhile, my Internet activities were open to a virus invasion. Fortunately, this was minimised by my firewall and anti-malware software (neither Norton/Symantec nor Microsoft), but that is not the point.
Yesterday afternoon, I decided on one last attempt. I uninstalled everything, I deleted all residues of Norton/Symantec/LiveUpdate that I could find, anywhere, (including over 300 residues in the registry after the uninstallation and which had no right to be left, if the uninstall software did its job properly). This did not work and I applied for a refund of my money, having uninstalled the software definitively.
Incidentally, at each new re-install, it came up with the Access Denied to C: message, indicating that your programmers could not even write the correct code for the protected Recycle Bin. This required manual correction, each time.
However, the surprise came this morning. Even though I had searched for and found everything I could and deleted it, when I started the computer up this morning, before booting into Windows, a screen came up to uninstall your GoBack files: this took four whole hours, during which time I could not use the computer. This is totally unacceptable.
As I decided that NSW had definitively become history - and all other Symantec software has been blacklisted from future purchases, I therefore sought anti-virus protection and defragging software (the two most important applications) elsewhere. I found one of each that appear to work at least as well your products, if the latter worked at all, and whose aggregate first-time cost is less than half the upgrade price for NSW Premier. Guess what? They work invisibly, non-invasively and with no significant increase of the booting time. And the AV had an automatic update, today, just a matter of hours after the initial installation, that took just a few minutes.
I'm an IT professional, having been a programmer (several high-level languages) of scientific instrumentation for many years. Never before have I had such problems with any type of software (and I hope never again!) and with such an execrable lack of manufacturer's support. It defies me that anyone who is computer-illiterate could handle such a situation.
I guess I've made my point.
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