Fun with Anti-Virus

Anti-Virus and Network Security are important to any computer user; but unfortunately the right choice in software can be a challenge. Today I had to endure a severe problem with Norton Internet Security 2007, which had rendered core Windows Networking software components laid to ruin - which was very frustrating for my customer. Luckily, Windows System Restore went some way to saving the day. 

System Restore lets you roll back your computer settings without affecting your documents, but it doesn't always run successfully. Periodic snapshots are taken and stored on a part of your hard drive. On the first three attempts, my customer was unsuccessful restoring the computer to recent snapshots, but by chance I tried an earlier snapshot from two weeks previous which had restored the networking components into a working state.

I then promptly uninstalled Norton Internet Security 2007 and replaced it with a trial version of AVG for the time being. I'm growing ever more sour of my experience with Norton, for one it is very heavy on any system, and secondly, it has an overly visible presence, distracting users only to inform them that it is there (example, a toolbar in Internet Explorer saying that YOU ARE SECURED, and periodic pop-ups saying STATUS GOOD).

So, credit still due to AVG, who write a great suite of products, all be it not the best looking - I've never had any trouble with it yet.