07.15.12
Bogged by anti-virus software
Oh, the pain.
A recent update to Symantec’s antivirus software rendered some Windows-based PCs inoperable, the security software maker disclosed Friday.
An update earlier this week to Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1 antivirus software for businesses caused some Windows XP-based computers to crash repeatedly with a “blue screen of death,” the company revealed on its Web site …
The company said it learned of the issue Wednesday night from customers, who said they were forced to manually remove the software from disabled machines, a process they described as time consuming … “This whole episode is a joke, had the issue been a conflict with a random device driver then I could maybe slightly more sympathetic,” the customer said. “But for it to conflict with its own Symantec related drivers and cause this issue is a total farce …”
Anti-virus software can’t be dispensed with by most. On the other hand, I was able to rid myself of it a few years ago through the combination of running things in a sandbox and knowing how to manually pick unrecognized malware off a machine.
I realized the only malware that was getting into my stuff was undetected by signature scanning and, subsequently, always removed before a signature update and automated purge was available. Indeed, the signature update would occur because I eventually submitted a sample and was curious about response times which were generally very good.
However, there was little practical value in continuing the use of it.
But I don’t recommend this for most. Regulars of DD blog, exempted, of course.