Poor Symantec. Last time we visited an issue like this, users upgrading to Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1 were experiencing registry corruption due to Symantec’s SymProtect feature preventing one of Microsoft’s fixccs.exe from deleting some entries.
Now it appears that Symantec’s security products have been having issues co-existing with Firefox 3. The issues have existed since Firefox 3 launched, but Mozilla’s recent decision to start alerting 2.0.x users to update to 3.0.1 gave the issue more publicity.
It’s become such an issue it was even discussed at last week’s Firefox 3.1 status meeting.
Problems have ranged from erased bookmarks and browser history, as well as loss of use of Identity Safe, a password management program included in Norton Internet Security (NIS) 2008, similar to Roboform, which I use.
Mozilla has gone so far as to create a Norton 360 configuration page to help alleviate these issues.
Symantec has two patches, one for NIS and one for Norton 360, both of which are available via Symantec’s LiveUpdate service. However, some are still having issues with Identity Safe, as indicated at the support forum link above.
According to Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s director for Firefox, older versions of Norton security software seem to prevent Firefox from shutting down properly.
“When the user starts up Firefox the next time, the file that’s used to store their bookmarks and history can’t be read, and as a result, the back and forward buttons don’t work and no bookmarks are shown. This coincides with the Identity Safe feature not working as well.”
Symantec’s products have been widely criticized for being tough on both memory and CPU utilization. Their 2009 versions, still in public beta, have, according to Symantec, been engineered to be much lighter on system resources.
