Post #120,722
10/10/03 4:29:51 AM
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Why oh why did I download Norton Antivirus?
Note to self (lowercase 's' self, that is): use your brain - check zIWT before doing anything rash!
My 'main' (or more accurately, 'fastest') PC, pretty much used only for encoding music, and playing games, has been acting kinda funny of late. I mean to say, it runs Windows, so 'funny' is a given, but anyway...
So I thought I'd just download a quick anti-virus prog to see if there was anything wrong. I may be dumb enough to run Windows, but I'm not dumb enough to run Outlook, so I'm fairly sure it's not a virus - just normal Secret Windows Business that is making it steadily whackier as the weeks roll by.
Norton Anti-virus was, to use a delightful marketing-speak term, the 'top-of-mind' product I thought of, so off I dashed to the symantec site to download it. Approximately 25MB of 'what the hell does a virus checker need a 25MB download for?' downloading later, I run the install program.
"Setup requires Internet Explorer 5.1 or higher to run. Setup will now exit."
In the words of many a splendid person here at zIWT, I had to say : "What the FUCK?!" I mean, that's one way to ensure your own success as an anti-virus company - make the world's second biggest* virus portal an mandatory part of your product!
Sheesh. Thank dog I didn't download it over dialup - that'd make the pointlessness of it all just that much more frustrating.
On the plus side, however, this has strengthened my resolve: This weekend, that box is finally, belatedly, getting Debianised. :-)
* Outlook, of course...
John. Busy lad.
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Post #120,724
10/10/03 4:34:48 AM
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Re: Why oh why did I download Norton Antivirus?
You should be skinned and fed to tassies for intercoursing with those devils.
-drl
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Post #120,725
10/10/03 4:37:52 AM
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Hmm.. NAV, or Debian (or both!)? :-) WRT NAV, lesson learnt.
John. Busy lad.
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Post #120,810
10/10/03 2:00:56 PM
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love your reply
You should be skinned and fed to tassies for intercoursing with those devils.
Sounds like a LRPD candidate to me! lincoln
"Windows XP has so many holes in its security that any reasonable user will conclude it was designed by the same German officer who created the prison compound in "Hogan's Heroes." - Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
[link|http://users3.ev1.net/~bconnors/resume.htm|VB/SQL resume]
[link|http://users3.ev1.net/~bconnors/tandem_resume.htm|Tandem resume]
[link|mailto:bconnors@ev1.net|contact me]
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Post #120,731
10/10/03 7:29:47 AM
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Re: Why oh why did I download Norton Antivirus?
Clearly, you had the best of intentions, and the results will be satisfactory: the box is being Debianised. I suppose I'll have to update my [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=73770|list of install methods] to include "NAV-induced OS conversion". \r\n\r\n --\r\n
Karsten M. "Uppercase" Self [link|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com|kmself@ix.netcom.com]\r\n
[link|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]\r\n
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?\r\n
[link|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever.\r\n
\r\n
Keep software free. Oppose the CBDTPA. Kill S.2048 dead.\r\n[link|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html]\r\n
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Post #120,738
10/10/03 8:19:34 AM
10/10/03 8:23:06 AM
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It was the old Straw + Camel's Back = Overload Error thing.
I've been meaning to get Debian on it for ages, the whole behaviour of NAV was enough for me to say "this whole thing has to go. No one should have to put up with that."
FWIW, I downloaded grisoft's AVG anti-virus, and sure enough the system is clean. It's just Windows, broken.
Edit: Hitting enter whilst editing the subject line submits a post? Maybe it's a Safari thing.
John. Busy lad.
Edited by Meerkat
Oct. 10, 2003, 08:23:06 AM EDT
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Post #120,742
10/10/03 8:39:17 AM
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Re: It was the old Straw + Camel's Back = Overload Error thi
Yes, yes.... But about this Randy Christian fellow... --\r\n
Karsten M. Self [link|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com|kmself@ix.netcom.com]\r\n
[link|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]\r\n
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?\r\n
[link|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever.\r\n
\r\n
Keep software free. Oppose the CBDTPA. Kill S.2048 dead.\r\n[link|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html]\r\n
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Post #120,849
10/10/03 6:55:13 PM
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Maybe it's an Australian peculiarity,
but people here are never called Randy - (unless of course they're in the mood). So I couldn't help but comment. Put it down to the joys of cross-cultural experience :)
John. Busy lad.
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Post #120,875
10/10/03 9:44:46 PM
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Re: Maybe it's an Australian peculiarity,
<chain type="yanked"> \r\n\r\n And I suppose I'm a Yank. Randy or otherwise. --\r\n
Karsten M. Self [link|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com|kmself@ix.netcom.com]\r\n
[link|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]\r\n
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?\r\n
[link|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever.\r\n
\r\n
Keep software free. Oppose the CBDTPA. Kill S.2048 dead.\r\n[link|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html]\r\n
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Post #120,909
10/11/03 10:46:56 AM
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Maybe *I'm* an Australian peculiarity :)
Anyways, Deb install is progressing happily at the moment.
Gotta say thanks for your sysinfo script, Karsten, and thanks to everyone else that has ever offered Debian tips here on zIwt/Twit. Has proven to be (yet again) a very valuable resource.
Stand by for x number of 'How do I get this bit to work?' posts in future... :)
John. Busy lad.
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Post #120,860
10/10/03 7:30:14 PM
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Body snatching
It might be interesting to convert in place SuSE, Redhat, Folkix, etc. to Debian (evil grin)...I'm getting rather annoyed at SuSE for changing methodology again and again..
-drl
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Post #121,106
10/13/03 6:43:40 PM
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Try Alternatives
AVG 6.0 is Free for Non-Commercial Use:
[link|http://www.grisoft.com/|http://www.grisoft.com/]
NAV sometimes lets viruses slip by, or so others have told me after they switched to AVG AV.
Could be a Trojan too, try The Cleaner for 30 days:
[link|http://www.moosoft.com/thecleaner/download.php|http://www.moosoft.c...aner/download.php]
I liked it so much that I registered it. The 30 day demo helped clean up a friend's system that did file sharing. Beware of stuff you get from file-sharing networks, they are unverified and may contain trojan or virus code.
"Lady I only speak two languages, English and Bad English!" - Corbin Dallas "The Fifth Element"
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Post #121,144
10/14/03 2:29:04 AM
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Err, he did
Only he removed the problem, instead of trying to change the cure...
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #121,196
10/14/03 3:59:14 PM
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At the very least
I would try the alternative AV solution just to see what virus or torjan bit Windows before reformatting and installing Debian. Just for couriosity's sake.
"Lady I only speak two languages, English and Bad English!" - Corbin Dallas "The Fifth Element"
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Post #121,228
10/14/03 6:21:55 PM
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Life would have to be very dull...
...if antivirus software could liven it up.
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #121,416
10/16/03 8:20:06 AM
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If Windows goes wierd, it's usually better to re-install.
I had a PC that I re-installed every 6 to 8 months. Windows just ate itself over time. Of course, it was probably Office fighting with the games, but still.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #121,418
10/16/03 8:25:33 AM
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Let me finish your sentence: ... a real operating system :)
John. Busy lad.
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Post #121,429
10/16/03 9:39:30 AM
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The three R's, RRR
Reboot, Reformat, Reinstall. Fixes almost any serious Windows problem. Usually due to:
#1 A bad registry
#2 DLL Hell
#3 Bad Hard Drive partition (run FDISK, delete the partition, recreate it, reformat)
#4 A Virus or Trojan messing things up and AV and Cleaner software cannot remove it.
#5 Bad System files.
Sometimes you can just delete the registry or part of it and do a reinstall, that is if you know which part of the registry is bad.
Of course doing a RRR and using Linux instead will provide different results. :)
"Lady I only speak two languages, English and Bad English!" - Corbin Dallas "The Fifth Element"
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Post #121,211
10/14/03 5:10:04 PM
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Norton Antivirus . .
. . puts its hooks way too deep into the system for my comfort. When I get a machine in for weird problems the very first thing I do is remove Norton anything to keep it from screwing with me. I don't reinstall it either, I tell the client s/he can reinstall it if s/he wants to.
A fun trick with Norton Antivirus: clone a hard disk with Norton AV installed to a different size drive (install Windows on the new, boot on the old and xcopy everything. Boot to DOS and copy the registries to make sure). About 4 days later, Norton AV will wake up, see the boot and partition info is different, and restore the old versions. Cool - no disk.
Took an hour in surgery to bring the disk back the first time that happened to me. It isn't going to happen again.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #121,229
10/14/03 6:26:38 PM
10/14/03 6:27:48 PM
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They all do that.
We've got McAfee Active Virus Defense (blurgh, you Americans and your butchering of my language), comprising VirusScan Enterprise 7.0, Groupshield, ePO, etc., and that installs a couple of filesystem-level drivers (specifically I'm thinking of NAIFSREC.SYS). It's the only way you can have on-access scanning without killing the performance of the machine.
Sophos and whatever Kaspersky Labs product is called do something similar.
Norton Antivirus home edition is a horrible piece of cack. The corporate version is much more reasonable. I'm not particularly enamoured of the whole Live* thing, though. The engine is more-or-less the same, but the corporate edition is clearly aimed at grownups, whereas the home version (Norton Antivirus 2003?) is clearly aimed at the under-10s market segment.
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
Edited by pwhysall
Oct. 14, 2003, 06:27:48 PM EDT
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Post #121,232
10/14/03 6:42:21 PM
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Well, I use Command Antivirus . .
. . which I've found far easier to handle than the big names, and it hasn't done anything weird on me yet. It's not that well known (which may be good since some worms now attack the big names) but I notice a number of universities use it.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #121,415
10/16/03 8:17:32 AM
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Norton got market share by being persistent.
I remember version 1. It was horrible. In professional reviews, the only product that was consistently worse than it was the anti-virus that can with DOS 6. But a year later and signature update files were regular on FIDOnet BBSs. Persistence.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
|
