Post by thread:[OT:] Norton Anti-Virus revival

PICLIST: I have heard of several people who have purchased Norton Anti-Virus 1 year eligibility extensions via the web and then had their PC crash part way through the paid for year. The revived system has no way of re-enabling the entitlement and Norton seem to provide no path to access them to ask how to deal with this problem. This kills not only the eligibility extension that has been paid for but also the right to buy another eligibility extensions at the end of the year concerned. As eligibility extensions are far cheaper than new (retail) versions of the program, there can be significant monetary penalty involved. Has anyone else had this problem? Is there are known solution? If yes & no to above, maybe there's a case for a class action suite for those so inclined :-) Russell McMahon -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList spam_OUTpiclist-unsubscribe-requestTakeThisOuTmitvma.mit.edu

Russell, On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:24:09 +1200, Russell McMahon wrote: > Has anyone else had this problem? No, but my brother bought an extension over the Internet only to find it didn't work. Eventually they said he'd bought a US extension, and his software was the UK version. Their attitude was that he'd bought the wrong thing and it was his fault, so basically he now had to buy the UK extension and he'd lost his money on the US one. On my advice he ditched it all together, and went with Norman Virus Control ( http://www.norman.com ) instead, and has never looked back. And from personal experience their customer service is excellent! Cheers, Howard Winter St.Albans, England -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList .....piclist-unsubscribe-requestKILLspam@spam@mitvma.mit.edu

Russel, I had the same problem several years ago. I dropped them and got FPROT (Finland I think) and I've never been happier. These guys upgrade DAILY and in 2.5 years of use, I've never failed to get into the update site. Never had a virus crash, either. --Bob Russell McMahon wrote: {Quote hidden}> PICLIST: > > I have heard of several people who have purchased Norton Anti-Virus 1 year > eligibility extensions via the web and then had their PC crash part way > through the paid for year. The revived system has no way of re-enabling the > entitlement and Norton seem to provide no path to access them to ask how to > deal with this problem. This kills not only the eligibility extension that > has been paid for but also the right to buy another eligibility extensions > at the end of the year concerned. As eligibility extensions are far cheaper > than new (retail) versions of the program, there can be significant monetary > penalty involved. > > Has anyone else had this problem? > > Is there are known solution? > > If yes & no to above, maybe there's a case for a class action suite for > those so inclined :-) > > > > Russell McMahon > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList > piclist-unsubscribe-requestKILLspammitvma.mit.edu > > -- Replier: Most attachments rejected -------------- Bob Axtell PIC Hardware & Firmware Dev http://beam.to/baxtell 1-520-219-2363 -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList .....piclist-unsubscribe-requestKILLspam.....mitvma.mit.edu

I'm not a Norton user, but my father is - and he re-enters a number from the confirmation webpage or something when he reinstalls, and the entitlement carries over. I'm not sure if he's using an older version of Norton and they don't allow this anymore or not. I do remember that much older versions of Norton (version 5.something) only required a reinstall to reactivate LiveUpdate - and Win98 (with my hardware) being what it was, Windows needed a reinstall (+reformat) before the year was up :) On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:24:09 +1200, Russell McMahon <EraseMEapptechspam_OUTTakeThisOuTparadise.net.nz> wrote: {Quote hidden}> PICLIST: > > I have heard of several people who have purchased Norton Anti-Virus 1 year > eligibility extensions via the web and then had their PC crash part way > through the paid for year. The revived system has no way of re-enabling the > entitlement and Norton seem to provide no path to access them to ask how to > deal with this problem. This kills not only the eligibility extension that > has been paid for but also the right to buy another eligibility extensions > at the end of the year concerned. As eligibility extensions are far cheaper > than new (retail) versions of the program, there can be significant monetary > penalty involved. > > Has anyone else had this problem? > > Is there are known solution? > > If yes & no to above, maybe there's a case for a class action suite for > those so inclined :-) > > Russell McMahon > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList > piclist-unsubscribe-requestspam_OUTmitvma.mit.edu > -- -Randy Glenn Computer Eng. and Mgt. Year IV, McMaster University Chair, McMaster IEEE Student Branch randy.glenn-at-gmail.com - glennrb-at-mcmaster.ca randy.glenn-at-computer.org - randy_glenn-at-ieee.org http://www.randyglenn.ca -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList @spam@piclist-unsubscribe-requestKILLspammitvma.mit.edu

On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:24:09 +1200, Russell McMahon wrote: > PICLIST: > > I have heard of several people who have purchased Norton Anti-Virus 1 > year eligibility extensions via the web and then had their PC crash > part way through the paid for year. The revived system has no way of > re- enabling the entitlement and Norton seem to provide no path to > access them to ask how to deal with this problem. This kills not only > the eligibility extension that has been paid for but also the right > to buy another eligibility extensions at the end of the year > concerned. As eligibility extensions are far cheaper than new > (retail) versions of the program, there can be significant monetary > penalty involved. > > Has anyone else had this problem? > > Is there are known solution? Yes -- quit using Norton (Symantec) software. I have done so precisely because of crap like this. That, and the fact that most of their software embeds itself so deeply in Windows that *it* can't even completely uninstall itself. The only way software companies will get the message to stop abusing customer's rights is to hurt them on the bottom line. Matt Pobursky Maximum Performance Systems -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList KILLspampiclist-unsubscribe-requestKILLspammitvma.mit.edu

I used NAV and System Works for several years. Then one day NAV just stopped working. The "knowledge base" said to uninstall it and re-install it. That didn't fix it. The KB then said to go around deleting a ton of files and registry entries, then re-install it. That got it working (and, in fact, got me the original 1 year subscription that came with the CD). That lasted about a week. It then stopped working again. Our windows expert spent a few days working on it and gave up. So, this machine no longer runs NAV. Instead, another machine runs virus scans on our backups. Meanwhile, NAV continues to work fine at home. At home I'm running Norton Ghost to do a backup image of the hard drive at the beginning of each month. This backup is to an external USB drive. I swap between a couple USB drives at the beginning of each month. Then, "Backup Time" runs a weekly backup of all files to the same drive. So far, this "insurance" has kept me from having a drive destroying crash. The idea is that should I suffer such a crash, the drive image gets be back to where I was at the beginning of the month, and the file backup gets me back to the beginning of the week. Even NAV should come back (though it did not at work). Harold {Quote hidden}> On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:24:09 +1200, Russell McMahon wrote: >> PICLIST: >> >> I have heard of several people who have purchased Norton Anti-Virus 1 >> year eligibility extensions via the web and then had their PC crash >> part way through the paid for year. The revived system has no way of >> re- enabling the entitlement and Norton seem to provide no path to >> access them to ask how to deal with this problem. This kills not only >> the eligibility extension that has been paid for but also the right >> to buy another eligibility extensions at the end of the year >> concerned. As eligibility extensions are far cheaper than new >> (retail) versions of the program, there can be significant monetary >> penalty involved. >> >> Has anyone else had this problem? >> >> Is there are known solution? > > Yes -- quit using Norton (Symantec) software. I have done so precisely > because of crap like this. That, and the fact that most of their > software embeds itself so deeply in Windows that *it* can't even > completely uninstall itself. > > The only way software companies will get the message to stop abusing > customer's rights is to hurt them on the bottom line. > > Matt Pobursky > Maximum Performance Systems > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList > RemoveMEpiclist-unsubscribe-requestTakeThisOuTmitvma.mit.edu > -- FCC Rules Online at http://www.hallikainen.com -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList spamBeGonepiclist-unsubscribe-requestspamBeGonemitvma.mit.edu

On Jul 29, 2004, at 2:24 AM, Russell McMahon wrote: > > I have heard of several people who have purchased Norton Anti-Virus 1 > year eligibility extensions via the web and then had their PC crash > part way through the paid for year. The revived system has no way of > re-enabling the entitlement The last time I reinstalled Norton (SW2000, I think) on a rebuilt PC, it reinitialized the "subscription" to updates to one year from the re-install date. I was pleasantly surprised; my subscription had expired well before the actual crash :-) Perhaps this was a bug that has been fixed, or perhaps it's supposed to address the situation you describe. BillW -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList TakeThisOuTpiclist-unsubscribe-requestEraseMEspam_OUTmitvma.mit.edu

On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 15:02:35 -0500, David VanHorn wrote: > > > >The last time I reinstalled Norton (SW2000, I think) on a rebuilt PC, > >it reinitialized the "subscription" to updates to one year from the > >re-install date. > > > Amusing idea: Set the PC date to NEXT year, before installing. :) That would be a bit of a problem for me the first time my system queried the NIST time server to adjust the clock on the half hour... ;-) Someone commented recently about anyone having more than 1 computer never knowing what the time was. My six systems all stay in time sync within a couple hundred milliseconds thanks to automatic NIST time updates. Matt Pobursky Maximum Performance Systems -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList piclist-unsubscribe-requestEraseME.....mitvma.mit.edu