I've always used Norton software including Anti-Virus, SystemWorks, and Internet Security, and have usually found them stable, competent products. However, I've recently had two cases of problems upgrading Norton software.
My wife and I each had Norton SystemWorks 2001 on our Windows 2000 work machines. My Live Update subscription expired last autumn, and as the product was getting long in the tooth, rather than just buying a new Live Update subscription, I decided to upgrade to SystemWorks 2004. To do the upgrade, I had to uninstall the old version first, and that's where the troubles began....
For some reason, trying to uninstall SystemWorks brought up the uninstall screen for Netscape Communicator! I couldn't see any obvious way around this, so I uninstalled Communicator, however then Windows complained that there was no uninstall information for SystemWorks. Argh.
I couldn't delete many Norton files and folders manually, even as Administrator, as they were considered to be "in use" by Windows. I ended up searching startup folders and the Registry, and manually deleting all the references to Symnatec and Norton that I could find. After an hour or two of zapping files and rebooting, I'd killed enough of Norton that I could delete the directories and install SystemWorks 2004. (And re-install Netscape).
Yesterday, I went through the whole routine again on my wife's machine to upgrade her SystemWorks. Same problem, down to the strange Netscape uninstall linkage, but at least this time I was smarter and used Windows 2000 Safe Mode to zap Norton and Symantec directories and files, which was much faster as fewer were running.
Posted by Paul at January 29, 2004 07:55 PM