So it seems that Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 is trying to make my life difficult again when I really would prefer that it stays simple. One of my clients called me in a panic saying that her, and everyone elses, "My Computer" screen was empty. Convinced that this could not be the case and that the description she was giving was "erroneous" I told her not to worry and that I would be there soon.
Upon arrival I had a quick look at in Windows Explorer and My Computer and sure enough everything was gone, not just network drives but C: and D: as well. Strange, very strange. Looked at a couple of other workstations and sure enough everyone was the same. Quickly logged into the server thinking the worst (SBS 2008) and everything was exactly as it should be. All the files there, all the shares there and everything accessible. Not to worry, a quick restart should fix the problem and sure enough it did.....for about a week and then it all happened again. After a bit of trouble shooting (ok, a lot) I got round to checking out the AV and after a bit of googling I found a lot of other people having the exact or very similar problem.
No problem I thought, Ill just uninstall Endpoint...but Endpoint had different ideas. I tried to uninstall it but it refused to go and I ended up with a hung server. No choice but to hard power it down. Came back up again and it was half uninstalled. Ok try and uninstall again......hmmmm server hung again so have to hard power it down....again. Start back up.....server has crapped itself and tells me it will be shutting down in 1 minute. About now I am starting to get nervous. Server comes back up and I can log in but all sorts of services are failing and error messages are showing up in the logs. I bounce it again to give it a clean shutdown and restart and it seems to work ok. Decide to try reinstalling Endpoint to see if that will let me uninstall it. Seems to install ok......restart server.....buggeration, its stuffed again.
I continue until I strike some lucky combination of uninstalled and installed state where the server seems happy to come up and everything is working. I tentatively disable the on access scan and still everything works. Hurray, I can go home about 5 hours late.
I am now trying to get my hands on the Symantec Uninstall tool that they apparently have to get rid of the "software" once and for all. I mean, how good can a piece of software be that it needs to have a special tool written just to uninstall it properly.
So, I hear Kaspersky is pretty good, maybe Ill give that I go.
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