As I detailed here, I’ve had some problems in the past with Symantec’s support.  Now, it’s their product division that I’m mad at.

Why this time?  Well, I’ve been a longtime user of Norton Systemworks.  I think the first version I bought was 2000, and I’ve re-upped my subscription every year.  I know a lot of people have had trouble with it over the years, but WinDoctor has worked wonders for me at being able to avoid wiping my computer every few months, which was relatively common in the past.

However, I’m also using this product on a corporate laptop.  This means that I have Symantec’s corporate anti-virus product installed, Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition.

Systemworks has never been all that friendly with Symantec AntiVirus.  The install program has over the years told me that a) I needed to un-install Symantec AntiVirus or b) that I was getting an incomplete install because it was unable to install it’s own AntiVirus program.  Also, you have to “convince” WinDoctor and One Button Checkup not to complain about your lack of an installed anti-virus program (come on, it’s from the same company, and you can’t recognize it’s existence?!?!?!), but this year, Symantec has hit a new low in product incompatibility.

Norton Systemworks 2006 has a new “feature”, the “Norton Protection Center”.  The Norton Protection Center uses the “toast” mechanism, like ZoneAlarm, to warn you about problems on your computer.  So, now I’m getting toast telling me that I don’t have any anti-virus program installed.  I can tell the protection center that I don’t want such alerts, but I still get a big red X on the icon letting me know that it thinks that there’s something wrong with my computer.

However, the NPC is crying wolf here, as I DO have anti-virus installed.  So, now, if there actually is a valid reason for that X to be there someday, I’ll never know, because I’ve already trained myself to ignore it.  Great feature, guys.  Thanks.  Didn’t anyone beta test this?  I’d like to just make the icon go away, because I already have an anti-virus icon, and a System Doctor icon, but that will take a little bit of work because it appears to be started from the registry and not from a startup folder (thanks again, guys).

Of course, what I’d really like is for Symantec to a) tell me how to get the thing to work right, or b) fix their stupid application so that it does.

Past performance has me less than hopeful on either of these two fronts, however.

UPDATE: As detailed in the comments by Byron and Vincent, disabling the service does indeed work.  However, that's a less than optimal solution in my opinion.