An update from Computerworld U.S.:
Symantec Corp. today denied that its consumer security software,
including Norton Internet Security and Norton 360, is to blame for
wreaking havoc on some users’ PCs after they upgraded to Windows XP
Service Pack 3.
Microsoft Corp. declined to answer questions about the problem,
which has emptied Windows’ Device Manager and deleted network
connections, preventing some users from connecting to the Internet or
to wireless networks.
According to reports posted the day after Microsoft launched Windows
XP SP3 on Windows Update, some users found that their network cards and
previously-crafted connections had mysteriously vanished from Windows
after updating to the service pack.
“The Network Connections screen now does not show any of the NIC
cards. I have three adapters that used to show up,” said someone using
“MRFREEZE61″ as an alias on Microsoft’s XP SP3 support forum on May 7.
“In an attempt to troubleshoot, I tried to bring up the Device Manager,
and to my surprise it is now empty.”
Numerous other users corroborated MRFREEZE61’s account on the same support thread.
MRFREEZE61 reported that he had found large numbers of corrupted
entries in Windows Registry, a directory that stores settings and other
critical information for Microsoft’s operating system. Those entries,
said MRFREEEZE61, began with the characters “$%&”; once they were
removed, the PC returned to normal.
Others chimed in to claim that the errant keys were located in
sections of the registry devoted to settings for Symantec products, and
they pinned blame on the security company’s consumer-grade software
installed on their PCs. “I see parent keys that all seem to be
Norton/Symantec product keys,” said someone identified as “gfrost.”
“This appears to be a Symantec-related problem according to the keys
showing up,” said another user, “datarimlens.” “Is anyone from Symantec
on this yet? Since SP3 has been distributed to at least one of my
machines, am I to believe that this problem did not show up in testing?
Really? For something as widely tested as SP3? Really? I mean
seriously?”
“I upgraded three well-maintained laptop machines, one with NIS2008
[Norton Internet Security 2008] installed and running during the
upgrade, one with NIS2008 installed but shut down during installation
and one without NIS2008 installed,” said “bighowie,” yet another user
posting to the forum. “As you guessed, the one without NIS2008 upgraded
like a charm. No problems. The other two have the same mess as
identified by all in this thread.”
Today, Symantec said its initial investigation had uncovered no
cause and effect between its software and the corrupted registry keys,
which in some cases numbered in the thousands.
“While we’re seeing that this issue can affect Norton users, we
don’t believe we’re the root cause,” said Sondra Magness, a Symantec
spokeswoman, in an e-mail. “In further searches on this issue, we found
a number of users experiencing the problem but who do not have Norton
software and/or are experiencing the issue on XP SP2.”
In a follow-up telephone conversation, Dave Cole, Symantec’s senior
director for product management of its consumer offerings, acknowledged
that users running Norton titles were experiencing problems, but he
said the numbers are small. “The support lines are not ringing off the
hook,” he said. Cole also said that Symantec had done “extensive
testing” of its products with Windows XP SP3, but this issue hadn’t
surfaced.
And he essentially blamed Microsoft for causing the problem. “This
is related to XP SP3,” he said, “and XP SP3 has already had other
issues specific to some OEMs and some processors.”
Cole was referring to the “endless reboot” snafu that users began
reporting after applying the service pack upgrade. Last week,
Hewlett-Packard Co., whose AMD-powered machines were cited by most
users as the only ones affected, confirmed the rebooting glitch, and
Microsoft announced it would add a filter to Windows Update to prevent
AMD-based PCs from obtaining XP SP3 via the update service’s listings.
“People need to exercise caution before [updating to] XP SP3,” said Cole. “This may well go beyond Symantec.”
For its part, Microsoft has remained mum. Although a Microsoft
engineer asked users on the support forum for additional information —
and provided an e-mail address for them to forward details — the
company did not address questions put to it Monday that asked it to
confirm the problem, point out any posted Microsoft solutions and fix
blame on either Symantec or its XP SP3 update.
Microsoft limited its response to boilerplate language that it has
used before in statements about XP SP3. “Customers who experience a
problem with Windows XP SP3 installation should contact Microsoft
Customer Support Services, which can provide free assistance and
troubleshooting for these issues,” a company spokeswoman said in an
e-mail Monday afternoon.
Some users, in fact, reported that they had contacted Microsoft’s
help desk, and via a remote session managed by the tech support
representative, had had their Windows registry cleaned. Many others,
however, vented at the apparent lack of interest by Microsoft in their
troubles.
“I see no evidence that Microsoft is working on this issue, or even
that they are mildly concerned about it,” wrote “Sandbridge” Friday.
MRFREEZE61 posted clean-up instructions for afflicted users on the
Microsoft support forum, and several reported back that the work-around
had done the trick. “Hey Mr. Freeze, just wanted to say that your
solution saved my butt big time,” said someone identified as “RevDAGG”
on Sunday.
Manually deleting the rogue registry keys, however, was impossible
for some, who reported thousands, even tens of thousands, of corrupted
entries; several called for an automated tool to help them do clean-up.
“Once we’ve figured out how many customers this affects, [an
automated tool] is absolutely possible,” said Symantec’s Cole. “If
there is something we can do to address the problem, we’ll do it.”