Auto Updater and Norton Internet Security

[Jonathan]

NIS Version: 17.7.0.12

Hello,

I have a product that is configured to run the auto-updater application (renamed to PTMProUpdater.exe) to check for updates. During testing I found that the update would freeze on the 'checking for updates' message and never pop-up the dialogue stating a new version of the product was available. This was a bad freeze that I had to restart the computer to escape as even task manager didn't run. After a bit of trial and error testing I narrowed it down to NIS, specifically Auto-Protect, blocking the updater. Unfortunately there was no message from Norton and the updater progam froze leaving the computer in the dificult state.

Firstly is there a way I could set-up the auto-update differently to bypass this problem? And secondly would it be possible for the auto updater to not freeze when attempting to pop-up the 'what downloads are available dialogue' and maybe come back with a message that something is stopping it?

Regards,
Jonathan
P.S. I have included the entry from Norton's history where the block happens

[GabrielBarbu]

Hello,

It is likely your antivirus software is giving you a false positive. Perhaps an update to your antivirus would fix the issue?
We've tested with the latest version of the antivirus however we could not replicate the issue. The update worked fine. However the antivirus seemed to suspend the updater for a bit, which after a while resumed and did the update fine.

Best regards,
Gabriel

[Jonathan]

Thank you for the reply and I will contact Norton. I understand that there is not much that can be done to prevent Norton from deciding to block the updater but is there a way that the updater could be made more robust? For example it appears that it opens the dialogue that lists the available downloads as modal and waits for it to close before continuing - making it impossible to cancel when the dialogue is blocked. Instead it could open the dialogue and monitor for it to terminate in a loop that would allow other events to be picked up and so still allow cancel to work.

As it is I don't feel confident in using the updater as NIS is quite a common program and many clients are likely to be using it - resulting in unhappy calls to our help desk when they try to check for updates and lock their computer up. This is a bit of a shame as when it works it looks very nice indeed.

Regards,
Jonathan

[GabrielBarbu]

Hi Johnatan,

Did you try to update the antivirus? Also, please let us know which version of the antivirus you are using.

Best regards,
Gabriel

[Jonathan]

Gabriel,

The version of Norton Internet Security is 17.7.0.12. I just tried running an update on Norton (liveUpdate) but sadly that didn't help. It also occured to me that changing the name of Updater.EXE, by entering a new name on the configuration page, might have been a problem as you may already have got updater.exe on the Norton whitelist however changing the name back to updater.exe didn't help.

Regards,
Jonathan

[Jonathan]

Gabriel,

Have you had any further thoughts on this issue?

Regards,
Jonathan

[mihai.petcu]

Hello Jonathan,

As my colleague said, we tested the updater with the last version of Norton Internet Security and everything works fine.
We do not have access to version 17.7.0.12, thus we cannot reproduce the issue.
Can you please provide a download link for version 17.7.0.12, so we can test it?

Best Regards,
Mihai

[Jonathan]

As my colleague said, we tested the updater with the last version of Norton Internet Security and everything works fine./

That is interesting and quite positive, unfortunately I missed it in the previous messages.

As to providing a download for Norton - well things have moved on a bit since then. Firstly I requested the updater be added to the Norton whitelist, secondly I upgraded to Norton Internet Security 2011, I then retested the updater and it still froze. Finally I checked the updater's exe file certificate, it looked OK but I reinstalled the certificate and retested and it worked. Therefore it looks like the root of the problem was the certificate not being properly installed. Overall I'm a bit more comfortable with the situation now.

Regards,
Jonathan