I hate Symantec

[Shalom]

Not having to do with other customers, just a rant about a company that hasn't been the same since Peter Norton left.

Because of the short-sightedness of whoever originally set up the partitions on this machine, way back when, our c: partition is chronically short of space, resulting in a recent failure of our drug database to update itself. So I was poking around add/remove programs, looking for unnecessary stuff that I could ditch.

I discover that Symantec pcAnywhere is installed.

Damn, is that still around? I remember using it in college, back around 1995 or so. I called our software vendor just to make sure that we aren't using it for anything. They say it's not needed, and I can ditch it. In any case, it claims not to have been used since 2004, which is four years before we even acquired this computer.

So I go to uninstall it. Uninstall fails. Why? Because these morons at Symantec saw fit to leave the uninstall file in a subdirectory under %TEMP%. Which gets cleaned out every now and then (see above re: shortage of disk space).

Fine, I can nuke it manually, right? Hit symantec's website, find the instructions.

Holy crap. They want me to manually remove no fewer than 151 freaking registry keys. About a quarter of which are CLSIDs, which are identiified by hex numbers only. No, they didn't give me a convenient .reg file to import either. Had to go through the list by hand nuking them one by one. (Can't even shift-click to get a bunch at once, regedit won't let you for some reason.)

There were quite a few things I'd rather have been spending time on than that, but I got it done. Sheesh. Temp directories are not supposed to be places to store stuff long-term, you idiots.

Ah well. The mantra of Another Place that I used to hang out in was "All Software Sucks". Still, some suck harder than others.

[ender]

Quoth Shalom

I hate Symantec

All I can say is Welcome to the club.

[PepperElf]

dang. at that point, frankly it might be easier to reformat/repartition.

tho that in itself is a lot of work too

[patiokitty]

If I get a computer with anything Symantec pre-loaded I immediately uninstall it. I detest their software with a passion. At one point it was pretty good but now it is nothing more than bloatware that blocks stuff when you don't want it to and tends to be a resource hog.

[sms001]

Doesn't CrapCleaner parse the registry for things like that?

(And concur on Peter himself; Norton Commander, Guides, heck, just UNErase made him legend.)

[Geek King]

I feel your pain on the mass registry edits. I found out recently that Chrome borks the registry when you have it as primary browser, then uninstall it. I had to check a couple dozen keys to change the values so I could get an exec's PC back with working web browsing.

PS--The No-shift-Click in regedit is a protection. It seems very awkward, but its less awkward than frying multiple entries in a single mis-keystroke.

[protege]

Quoth patiokitty

At one point it was pretty good but now it is nothing more than bloatware that blocks stuff when you don't want it to and tends to be a resource hog.

Norton had some good software at one time--efficient, and it did the job. Then Symantec took over...and all of that went to shit. After having too many issues at work, I refuse to use it, and will uninstall it if it comes on a new computer. Why is it, that their software, designed to prevent crashes...actually causes them?

[dalesys]

Quoth protege

...Why is it, that their software, designed to prevent crashes...actually causes them?

It'd be a terrible shame if this cute little knick-knack shop of yours should catch fire... or (CRASH! tinkle) be vandalized... you really need some insurance from a fine local enterprise with international connections....