for the techie people

[cornerofmadness]

norton wanted to update itself so I said yes. SIX hours later the monster program feed itself into the dial up and went to install. It was cranky that I had other norton stuff there that prevented installation and told me to remove it. I did. It installed. It seems to work

...too well. it's CONSTANTLY coming up with things it's blocking every half hour or so. Either it's 100 times better than the old one or its paranoid. All i have up is YIM, yahoo and LJ....it's being doing it for two days.

and ever since I've uploaded it, WORD is having a melt down. I open up files and sometimes you see the 'running viral scan' notice you always get then nothing...no file. WTF?

thoughts, suggestions (no, getting rid of norton isn't an option no matter how tempting)

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

And why isn't getting rid of Norton an option?

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

because it's part and parcel of my server's system and pulling anything at all thru the dial up is a nightmare and it's also the system that came with this computer so if I have to call about it I can call Dell, Earthlink and symantec for support

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

Hm. It's hard to figure out what's going on if I can't see what's actually going on, if that makes any sense. But I guess what I'd do is first shut everything down on your computer and run a complete viral scan and see if it finds anything. If it does, deal with those. I'd also run spyware scans after that. I'd also look into both Norton's and Word's preferences to see if there's anything I can tweak to make it run less often or something. If I did all of that and it's still acting like a bitch, then I'd grit my teeth, swallow my enormous pride and call tech support.

Sorry I can't be more helpful. If it's any comfort to you, you have fabulous taste in icons. ;)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

snort to the icon and thanks. I should know i fuck up any computer i touch. i killed on in the first week at school

[rahirah]

That's the kind of thing that led me to get rid of Norton - and I'd used Norton since it ran on DOS and was actually useful. I shelled out for PC-Cillin instead, and have never regretted it.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

You're the second one who suggested that. When the money for this runs out I'll think about it (since Norton is paid for at hte mo ment) WOuld I be able to get that on a disc since I wont be able to download does anyone know...(I think that sort of thing is banned at work where I could put it on a flash drive and carry it home)

[rahirah]

I'm pretty sure they sell it on CD/DVD as well as via download.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

cool, t hanks

[adeliedreams.livejournal.com]

What's it saying that it's blocking? If you can copy down a couple of those messages verbatim, that might help figure out what's going on.

Do you have any other firewall software (including the built in firewall for XP - try "Security Center" in the control panel) running at the same time?

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

it's a different something every time and i could do that. What it IS doing now is telling me the address of the attacking computer but i don't know enough to track it back

I'm half betting that the REAL problem here that the download got cut off THREE times and something isn't quite right. I should just restore the old settings.

[adeliedreams.livejournal.com]

Ok, that's easy enough to fix.

1) What Norton's warning you about *is* actually happening. Anytime you're on the internet, there's going to be a certain level of baseline traffic you're going to get, some automated (including from your own ISP - some systems are setup to keep asking your machine if it's still online so that it can free the line if you drop off), sometimes from virus infected machines, and sometimes from people that are just curious and running network scans. Not always going to be an "attack" but I bet that the folks that make Norton consider it a feature to warn you everytime someone makes a connection attempt of any sort. Translation: your version of Norton is paranoid.

2) It's been a while since I've dealt with Norton - outside of deleting it and installing the AVG + Kerio combo, but try this - launch the Norton Configuration utility, select the "Personal Firewall", then "settings", then "custom level" or "customize security". There should be a pop-up box with a couple of checkboxes for "Enable access control alerts" and "alert when unused ports are accessed". Turn those off (and potentially turn off any other alerts it might have options for). That should quiet things down considerably.

3) Alternatively, disable Norton's firewall altogether, and go into control panel, "security center" and enable the built in windows firewall. If you're on dial-up, you're at much less risk than someone that has a constant, high speed connection, so while there may be some flaws in Microsoft's version, it does it's job quietly, and it's honestly good enough if you're not on 24/7.

4) While you're in the configuration screen, head over to the anti-virus. There should be an option for checking word documents and email - you will want to turn those off if they're making the programs unusable.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

now that's helpful. thanks. (paranoia was what I waas thinking about this new update)

Here's an example of what I'm getting
Risk name - MSRPC LSASS DS Oversized Request TCP
Risk Level - high
default action - block
Action taken - block
attacking computer - gives me the numerical address (which i do have copied)
destination computer - me of course
traffic description - TCP, 4543

[adeliedreams.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's paranoia. That particular alert was Norton telling you that it blocked an attempt to connect to an Oracle database. Probably someone on dial-up that works remotely for their company, and got dumped from the company network. Definitely not high-risk, unless you happen to be running a very high end, expensive and complicated database system...

Turn those alerts off. :)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

they're all like that. Okay I'll try to figure out how to turn off those alerts.

[0-mother-0.livejournal.com]

Yes, Norton is bad... I used to have it too and had nothing but problems. I recommend Trend Micro Antivirus or PC-cillin.

But, since you have to deal with this problem now - I recommend that you call CR down in Hairy Palm. He's the magic man.

I agree with, adelie, too. Try to write down exactly what the program is saying, any error messages, etc. Also, open the program and look at what your options are. Perhaps there are just some simple changes you can make in the meantime like temporarily turning off real-time scan until you fix the glitches.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

it's not giving me any error messages. I'll ask CR next time he's up on YIM and see this is the first time I've had problems with Norton. It's McAfee that always gave me nightmares and being on dial up, downloading isn't going to happen. I'm half betting that the REAL problem here that the download got cut off THREE times and something isn't quite right. I should just restore the old settings.

[dknightshade.livejournal.com]

I totally get using Norton because that's what came with the computer, but I will tell you I've had 10x FEWER problems with McAfee. I was so, so, so happy to have Norton out of my life that it was worth it.

Definitely look through the Norton settings because I think you can turn it down. Also, definitely turn off the Norton spam blocker if you have it. That will also cause you many problems (it randomly chose to ignore my safe list). If you have Outlook, the internal spam blocker is a much, much better product anyway (scary that). And the popup blocker may cause you to not be able to see certain images in livejournal. If that happens, just turn it off too. I rarely had problems with Word not opening files after the a virus check, but I rebooted and that helped. I'm trying to think of other settings to try, but I can't picture the panel in my head anymore.

But I would also definitely let it scan the whole computer if you haven't already and then run some anti-spyware software too.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

See I had MCAfee last time and it totally fucked up my computer because it blocked nothing. Maybe they've improved that since 2004 though. They couldn't have made it any worse.

I've done all the spyware, rootkit etc etc scans before i even asked (which I forgot to mention, because I'm st upid), I think, however, I have a few options, including seeing if I can find the attacking computer which is likely to be either a friend or the horrendous ads on yahoo

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

This is why I got rid of Norton, it froze up my other compy and it never worked right since. I hope yours turns out better.

There's a site I have on my current compy which gives techi advice in a sort of blog type of thing. I'll see if I can find it, maybe it'll help.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

thanks. if nothing else, this updated version tells me the isp of the attacking computer but I don't know enough to know how to track it back

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

I think the site is Kim Kommando or vice versa. I wish I could send you a direct link.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i got this straightened out. I'd much rather stick with what I know actually works

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

Now if only I could straighten out mine.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

good luck

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

Thanks

[makd.livejournal.com]

Dude: go with trendcillin, avg, and adaware. the last two are free online. If you're interested, I'll send you the urls.

ditch Norton - stat!!

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

got those, they fail so routinuely that I disabled avg and Adware hasn't been able to update correctly in about a year (I shoudl do that at work and carry it here) Now I know what Norton's doing so I can just turn off the alerts. It's being overly cautious, that's all

[kashicat.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on the individual computers, though you wouldn't expect that.

I was great with Norton till a year ago, when I paid for the usual yearly update and the thing was so full of stuff that it slowed my computer to a crawl. The only thing, in the end, was to uninstall the monster memory-sucker and use something else.

Now I mainly rely on AVG and Super-AntiSpyware. And any email not only gets scanned at my end by AVG, but it's already been scanned by my ISP's Norton program. So I get a double whammy.

Sorry to hear you're having so many problems with Norton. They expanded it and made it do so much that it hogs all the computer's resources unless you've got a superfast, memory-rich computer. *sigh*

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I think it'sproably the memory sucking thing that everyone has complained about. I don't like AVG though,I've had a lot of problems with that one. And like you, I have norton via my ISP so until i leave Earthlink I'll probably stick with this