Sunday, May 14, 2006

Motzei Shabbat Rant at 4:00 AM

So, there's this virus on the Mrs. @ the Muqata's computer which she uses for work. I spent a few hours working on it on Friday morning and then took a very radical step for the Muqata IT dept., and I went out and purchased (not downloaded) Norton Internet Security 2006...

It (claims to have) removed the virus on the computer (after working on it for hours and hours on Friday) 20 minutes before Shabbat (not 18) the computer reboots, and the virus claims to have disappeared...and so has Norton Anti Virus. It's disappeared as well.

I have now spent hours tonight on motzei shabbat working on her computer, and the bottom line is -- Norton Anti Virus sometimes works...and is worth every cent. And sometimes it doesn't reinstall (like tonight) and is totally worthless.

So, the posts I didn't get to write this evening were:

1. The Greatest Tiyul of all Time (well, I wrote about half of it during reboots)
2. Lag BaOmer - the Biggest Historical Mistake? (Is Lag BaOmer really supposed to be a sad day, and we've gotten it all wrong?)
3. And the Enlightened Shall Shine (On meeting Nobel Prize Winner Prof. Auman -- and I received permission from the GodolHador (tm) website to borrow that term, temporarily, for the posting.

All I can say is that I hope the hacker who wrote the virus which infected my wife's computer (or the lame developers at Symatec/Norton) gets arrested and imprisoned by the Egyptian Police...and I hope that I get to finish at least one of these postings during waking hours.

Shavua Tov.


Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael, even if there is no such thing as Sunday in Israel, and I have to get up in a few hours.

10 comments:

JoeSettler said...

Stay away from Norton. Their versions over the past few years are even worse than you think.

First, congratulations on actually getting it installed and completely working, something I found ridiculously difficult in the OEM versions I got with my computers (some installed, and some wouldn't).

Then try to actually get it completely off your system without the hidden/secret application you need to download from Symantec to actually clean it all off (and thank me for letting you in on that secret that such an application exists, which took me 4 months to learn).

I personally use http://www.avast.com/.

It seems to work, and doesn’t slow my system down any worse than the other anti-virus programs I tried.

Shoshana said...

I tried Norton as well, and it messed up my computer so badly I had to take it off, and call the company to get my money back. Will never touch that one again. Avast is good, but I think it doesn't protect against spyware (I think that's what a computer nerd friend of mine told me) so I also use McAfee. With both of those running, I haven't had any problems.

chardal said...

Norton is evil.

I highly suspect they are better at writing viruses than cleaning them up. They are the most invasive software I have ever seen.

The best solution I have found is Trend Micro. You can run it from the web and it does not even require an installation.

Jack Steiner said...

I share your pain. Hope that it is solved now.

Ezzie said...

Ah, why is everyone bashing Norton!? This is an old virus - I had it, got rid of it, re-installed Norton, and was good to go. I haven't had any problems since.

Now, if only I could remember how I did it...

Jameel @ The Muqata said...

For now, we have Kaspersky running on my wife's computer, and it seems to be OK.

Thanks all for your good wishes...hope to have a good posting up for tomorrow.

FrumGirl said...

I have Norton... uh oh is that why my comp is always messed up?

Anonymous said...

Try using Ad-aware. We have it in addition to something else (whose name I can't remember) and I believe it works wonders.

Anonymous said...

When your computer is infected with a virus. Use more than one product, in the SAFE MODE to clean. I like McAfee, but also use Avast, AVG, and Kaparsky. Once done, run TrendMicro from their site www.trendmicro.com over night. Works like Mr. Clean.

Jameel @ The Muqata said...

Anonymous: The problem with Kaspersky is that is didn't know how to clean the virus my computer had...only delete the files. Norton did a great job cleaning the files, but then disappeared and is having trouble being reinstalled...

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