wotiwrote

I have been a contented user of Zone Alarm for my firewall and McAfee's VirusScan Online for my anti-virus software for something like four years. I made a deliberate decision in both cases not to choose a Symantec product because, without fail, friends, family, and colleagues who have chosen Symantec have regretted it.

It was with great disappointment, therefore, that I watched my new laptop announce on its first boot that I had been infected with both Symantec's personal firewall and anti-virus software. This was a trial offer, of course: I would get a few months 'protection' before being asked to pay. Whoopee. The fact that I have annual licenses for McAfee and Zone Alarm was obviously irrelevant. Please note: there was no option during first set-up to refuse the installation of the software. This alone is worth a serious BAD MARK for Lenovo/IBM.

I decided to suffer its presence until I had everything loaded up and working on the Z60m the way I wanted it. Big mistake. Step one: uninstall Symantec. There is no simple uninstall executable, of course. Symantec would probably justify this on the grounds of offering better security for the PC. Nothing to do with relying on human nature to dissuade people from making any effort to switch. Anyway. I assumed the correct option would be to use the Remove Software functionality so helpfully provided by Microsoft. Mmm.

The Symantec software is labelled as one big 'client security' bundle. I selected it and pressed the 'remove' button. It started to work. By the way, my anti-virus had somehow managed to disable itself prior to the start of this process and my inability to enable it again had been the deciding factor in pushing me to remove the stuff. About half way through the removal the inevitable happened: it stopped, with a message that I didn't have the rights to shut down processes etc. Complete cojones, of course, as I was able both before and after this attempt to stop processes via the admin tools function. The fact that I could see the admin tools menu proved that I had admin rights, no?

OK, so far so predictable. The firewall seemed to have been removed and only the disabled anti-virus appeared to be sitting in my launchbar. So I went ahead and installed Zone Alarm and VirusScan.

Eight hours later I gave up trying to reach the internet. My wireless was working fine and I could see the other machines in my network and I could even print to a wireless printer. But could I see the internet? I could not.

I rebuilt TCP/IP on the assumption that it had been corrupted somehow: I could ping my IP address from network computers but could not ping it myself. I switched off firewall and anti-virus. I removed Zone Alarm and VirusScan. Then I tried to repair the installation of Symantec: it failed. Finally, I tried to restore my system to a back-up point prior to my removal of the Symantec. It failed - incomplete.

The result? Last night I had to restore the Z60m to its factory state. Today will be a day of rebuilding. On a positive note, the Symantec stuff seems to be working OK!

What happens when the end of my trial period comes and I don't pay? Do I need to buy another laptop?