[Ham-Computers] Norton Internet Security 2005

Sun Nov 20 00:06:44 EST 2005

Jay, 	

It does not make a rodent's rump hair bit of difference who the company is or
what the product is, they all seem to be having their manuals written by ...
Well, who is writing these things anyhow? Now I realize some, many most, are
translated into English, but surely not all the errors come from the variation
in word definitions. Nor do they come from people who type with fingers large
enough to plug leaks in the Hoover Dam! Not only do the instructions make
little, if any sense, they are generally wrong! If you follow the "refer to page
X", which directs you to table Y on page X, which sends you to page X of Section
#1 of Part #3, but there is no such Section! Well, all jokes aside, this manual
business is truly ridiculous. It is not new either. I do not remember the last
manual I read that actually made sense, I could understand without getting
another Ph.D. in said subject and the directions actually worked! 	

Tech Support? Now there is an insult to human intelligence. These people are as
far from being 'technical' as I am from being the Tooth Fairy! (I did apply, but
lost out in favor of an unemployed Elf with experience sneaking into homes
during the night on Christmas Eve!) 	

I do not fault the people who answer the phones and type key words into the
database and then read us what it says. It is very hard, if not almost
impossible, to solve a problem when you do not understand the subject matter so
that you can even ask the database a correct question. Somebody needs to train
these people. But that takes time and costs money. The stockholders must have
that profit, so tell them to take a mail ordr course at their own expense and
label it as an Associates" degree in electricity management! (groan)	

Here is my advice, it actually works:	

Always ask the person who is supposed to be helping you, (be it a sales person,
contractor, household appliance repair person, computer technical support person
etc.), two questions that you know the correct answer to. See if he/she answers
you correctly or if they try to confuse you with a barrage of technical jargon,
redirect your attention by asking you a different question in the hope you
forget yours or if they tell the truth and say they do not know. 	

If they try to fake you out, find another person. This horse is dead, get off!	

If they try to blow smoke in your face and flee, let them go, nothing lost!		

If they answer them correctly, you may be talking to somebody who actually
understands the product and how it works!	

if they have the courage to admit they do not know, give them five dollars,
honest people are rare!

----------
From: Jay Eimer <ad5pe at familynet.net>
To: 'Computers (or other) used for amateur radio, communications,  or
experimenting' <ham-computers at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: RE: [Ham-Computers] Norton Internet Security 2005
Date: Saturday, November 19, 2005 11:13 PM

And then there's always this gotcha - they did the same thing with me, and
despite following their instructions to the letter (and I do know how - I'm
a true computer professional (developer)) - it didn't work.  It took 4 hours
on the phone to tech support (not counting the 4 MORE hours where it was
actually "running" the uninstall) for them to admit that it HADN'T
uninstalled correctly.

It took ME 4 MORE hours with various removal tools to try and find all
traces of it (and I know what I'm doing there, too).  Then I took it to a
"real" pro - my IT guy at work, and he found STILL MORE traces of NAV.

I took his evidence back to Norton.  They said to reinstall.  I said no
thanks - give me my money back.  They said format the HDD and reinstall.  I
repeated same.  At that point they said they "weren't going to waste any
more time" on me if I wasn't going to be "cooperative".  At that point I got
upset - and sent them a bill for 8 hours at my consulting rate, plus the
cost of the software.  Then they refunded the cost of the software.

But I'm not sure it was worth it.

Jay

-----Original Message-----
From: ham-computers-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:ham-computers-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of
jandlmiller at bellsouth.net
Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 20:52
To: ham-computers at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [Ham-Computers] Norton Internet Security 2005

If any of you have any **real** experience in using Norton Internet Security
2005 (or the McAfee equivalent) on a Gateway Solo 2150 laptop running under
the W98SE OS, I would be grateful if you would share your information.

>From time to time (too often) I get a "Ccapp" error screen.  I have assumed
this crash notification  was the result of Norton trying to update the
Anti-Virus part of this product.  "Ccapp" is one of the start-up items
appearing when I key Ctrl-Alt-Del.  I am really unsure what purpose "Ccapp"
serves.

Contacting Norton Tech Support so far has been useless; they said they don't
know what causes this error and want me to follow their procedure to totally
uninstall it, clean certain Registry areas pursuant to their specific
instructions, and then reinstall it.  Once this is done they say they will
promise to tell me what other software or hardware on my machine might be
causing this problem!  All of this seems to be somewhat of a fishing
expedition that I would assume to have been thoroughly tested during the
Norton beta stage.

I am aware that Norton products, probably quite a few of them, are
intolerant of being resident in machines that used either previous versions
of their own software, or other similar products to include but not be
limited to McAfee.

In my case, the NIS 2005 was installed by a professional computer service
technician who assumedly knew what he was about.  His work is thought to be
high quality and he is very much in demand.  Actually, McAfee was on this
laptop, and he told me that he removed "all traces" of McAfee because he
knew of the intolerance mentioned above.  He was not pleased with the way
McAfee did their live updates, and recommended I change to Norton.

A friend, who would best be described as a computer hobbyist and had another
serial number of this same product before he went to a Dell laptop, has
suggested that he was unsure whether either McAfee or Norton would work on
this machine.  He wondered whether or not the problem was a Gateway problem,
as in the BIOS or whatever.

It's an interesting thought that with this machine the problem is Gateway's
and neither Norton's nor McAfee's.

I have no problem in doing the total delete described by the Norton people,
except that once this total demise is accomplished, I might be better off to
drop Norton and go back to McAfee, if the reinstall is going to prove to be
a waste of time.

John W0IKT

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