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25 May, 2010

End of life

Anyone else using Symantec AntiVirus Corporate edition v.8 (from, er, 2002, though the definitions are still updated)?

You may have noticed a slight problem over the past week, whereby all scans, scheduled or manual, are 'stopped by user' within a second or so of starting.

My first thought was that malware was attacking the AV software itself, so I scanned using a different tool: no infection found. Then I thought that the latest definitions update had introduced a bug, which would be corrected by a follow-up update in a day or so. Right and wrong.

Right in that yes, the 11 May update (vd315603.xdb) introduced an incompatibility, but no, it won't be fixed. Ever. Symantec no longer support v.8, and have no intention of investigating the problem: official advice is to upgrade to at least v.10 (fine for me, as it's free from my employer).

I suppose I can't blame a commercial company for failing to support very old software forever, but I would have preferred them to close it down a little more gracefully.

Posted by Ministry at 12:03 | 174 words
Comments

Is this on your work computer? If it's your home machine, and you're on XP or better, I'd recommend Microsoft Security Essentials - it's lightweight, unobtrusive and does well at combating viruses.

I'd use it at work if we didn't have to use McAfee, which seems to slow all of our computers down terribly.

Posted by Neil T. at May 26, 2010 04:24 PM

It's on both; I have to use it at work, and get it free at home.

v.8 has always been unobtrusive, so I'm going to give v.11 a try, but thanks for the alternative suggestion if that doesn't work out. The "lightweight" part is fairly important to me.

Posted by NRT at May 26, 2010 08:17 PM
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