While not completely security related, there is news for those of you who had issues after installing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP on systems with Symantec applications installed. The issue with SymProtect has been addressed, and Symantec as released a tool to fix the issue as well as a fix pushed out to all Live Update customers.
Symantec offers fix for registry issues discovered during SP3 update. (IMG:J.Anderson)
Symantec products Norton Internet Security 2008, Norton SystemWorks 2008, Norton 360, or Norton AntiVirus 2008 all have one thing in common; SymProtect. This feature created a problem for users who went and installed Service Pack 3 for Windows XP that essentially turned their systems into big paperweights. Some of the issues included the Device Manager showing as empty and no options under Network management.
“After a lot of testing, we’ve reproduced a number of different cases where applying the XP SP3 upgrade adds additional registry keys within already existing Symantec registry keys. The Symantec keys affected vary from machine to machine and the effects of these added keys vary as well. We are still trying to understand why the upgrade is adding these keys. We have determined that the SymProtect feature is involved, though this issue is not exclusive to Symantec customers,” Reese Anschultz, Sr. SQA Manager of Symantec Corporation said in a post on the Symantec support forum.
At the time of Reese’s post there were some tips on mitigation with the promise of a tool to correct the issue. Now, this tool is a reality, and what’s more is that those with Live Update already have the fix if you are current on your product patches. For those who want to use the tool, the link is here: http://tinyurl.com/6fgjqz
You will want to use the downloaded tool if you already installed Service Pack 3, or if you want to double check the registry fixes. Running this tool after Live Update corrected the issue produced no errors in The Tech Herald’s labs.
Once you are current on your Symantec updates and patched, download and install SP3 for XP. Aside from security fixes, there are a few improvements to system stability and speed that make it worth the effort.
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