empty box

The Norton suite has a reputation of being bloated, doesn't work as well as other separate products, and most annoyingly has a trial version bundled on most PCs. Can't really blame Symantec for its expediency in having a trial version pre-installed on countless computers. However, they could be a little better when it comes to messing with system functions. Actually, those bastards could be much better.

Let me back up a bit and make clear why Norton deserves my ire. One of my wife's co-worker's daughter's computer recently got infected with viruses. Even after I gave some over-the-phone advice on cleaning the system, there were some lingering viruses and a problem with the internet connection. I received the thrice-removed laptop (yes, you did detect some resetment) on Wednesday and have worked on it for the past three nights.

Ironically, cleaning the viruses were easy. Most of the work was in waiting for the various scanners to do their magic. The annoying problem was getting the internet connection working again. Whether it was through the wireless or ethernet connections, they both showed "Local Only" and were reporting local 169 IP address. I thought it was something that it was caused by the viruses or the removal of the viruses. Perhaps they were insidious and hooked itself into the network stack; or maybe there's a hidden rootkit component that the scanners had missed. I was mistaken. After performing another battery of lengthy scans, I couldn't find anything else. My suspicions turned to some mysterious configuration or system corruption error. Off to the net I go! Apparently, Vista had a notorious bug in which people couldn't get onto the net. Such an error has many causes -- and unfortunately, many different possible solutions. I nearly tried them all. I was at wits end and was nearly going to reinstall the entire operating system when I tried something that worked.

The culprit was Norton, or rather a dirty uninstall of Norton. Bad, Norton, BAD! If you pre-install your product and your product hooks itself deep into system functions, you better make damn sure that your install routine works. Guess what? Symantec has a tool called Norton Removal Tool to do just that...but you have to download from their site. Oh, why didn't they have just included that as the installer in the first place!? Would have saved me so much trouble.

Just to help those with possibly the same problem:
Vista, "Local Only" connection, virus removal, lost connection, netfilter, Norton expired.