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• Category: IT Blogging
• Current Mood: >_< Frustrated

For a living, I work on computer and network design and repair for a local business. One program we enjoy selling to our clients is Symantec 10.2. That is before Symantec 11.0 was introduced. Here is our experience with this program.

Our first install of Symantec 11.0 was on the Windows network of another local business. The server that they had in control of this network was not one of the best quality available, but should have been able to carry out the install of any anti-virus software. The server was able install Symantec 11.0. After 3 hours that is.

The following day we returned to the same company to follow up on a complaint about the workstations running much slower than usual. After some brief diagnostics, we concluded that the workstations that were running poorly were using more RAM than the system was allowed.

At first we blamed the out of date system that the company had, but it was all down hill for Symantec 11.0 from there. We went to another local business who was having a problem with mapped network drives no longer being accessible. Turns out it was Symantec 11.0 that was causing this as well. We were able to solve the problem by remapping the network drives and a little registry editing.

The final problem with this software that threw us over the edge was an install on a brand new server. Before the install, we toke note of the amount of RAM being used by the server which was 414 MB. After the install of Symantec 11.0, the amount of RAM being used sky rocketed to 1.04 GB! Absolutely insane.

You think you can go ahead and uninstall Symantec 11.0 and install 10.2? Think again. After doing so the Windows Server toke close to 15 minutes just to boot. We solved this problem by disabling NLA under services. Something which led to other problems down the road with a mere USB mouse and keyboard.

My advise is to avoid Symantec 11.0. Getting a virus will do less harm than this particular anti-virus software. I myself, have always been a fan of Avast Anti-virus.