Question:
"Major Melt Down. I ran the beta spyware from
Microsoft and now my Norton Antivirus quit working and
updating. have you heard of this?" Tony -
Hornell, New York
Answer:
Dear Tony,
This is normally
outside the realm of the type of issues I try to address in
this section. But, after looking at some comments on the web
about this - I felt compelled to share a warning with all of
my readers.
According to what
I have learned thus far - It seems as though Microsoft's
Anti-SpyWare beta has tagged Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus as
a password stealing trojan virus.
This is a
serious problem for well intentioned end users like us!
After all, one
would think that a little extra protection for our home and
business PCs is called for with today's threats. So, we
trust Norton and we Trust Microsoft to behave and play nice
together - Ooops!
According to an
article by John Smith (no kidding) published last week:
"A recent update for Microsoft's Anti-SpyWare software
detects Symantec's Norton Antivirus as PWS.Bancos.A, more
commonly known as a Trojan horse virus. The problem with
this is when the Anti-SpyWare gets rid of the files in
Norton, Norton doesn't work anymore. This means it no longer
protects the system.
The problems with Norton's could only be corrected with
manual registry edits and a re-installation of the Symantec
Software. This would be problematic for most people and
would certainly leave their computer security crippled."
Yikes! Update
Procrastination paid off finally!
Tony, I am truly
saddened and I feel for you - but the truth is I try to
leave the computer guru tasks to the computer gurus.
If you don't mind
a shameless plug for a trusted referral, I would contact Bob
Thompson at
HiTechCS
in Hornell for assistance with getting your system back on
its feet. And, if at all possible I would keep your browsing
to a bare minimum to avoid potential harm.
Follow up with us
please and let us know what you learned. If you need further
assistance give me a call.
Readers, please
make note of this if you are running these two programs
together on your pc and avoid this wipe-out.
All the best,
Dave
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