Symantec Discussion Group Goes Down

The discussion group, which became inaccessible Thursday, had for several weeks been filling up with complaints that Business Pack 10.0 was not installing properly, said Jonathan Platt, president of Datasoft, a VAR in Pipersville, Penn. Platt has also had trouble with Business Pack 10.0 and was a participant of the discussion group, he said.

Symantec has notes placed on most all of its technical support discussion groups advising visitors that the groups will be shut down on Dec. 15. After that, "the Knowledge Base and other automated support options will still be available," each of the notes say.

Recent complaints posted about Business Pack 10.0 in that product's discussion group centered around buffer overflow errors the software triggered because of a Defwatch QuickScan feature that was recently added to the product, said Platt. Defwatch QuickScan boots at the startup of Business Pack 10.0 and runs a quick antivirus scan of the local system, he said.

Symantec support personnel answering discussion questions advised those encountering the buffer overflow problem to "turn off QuickScan," said Platt.

Disabling QuickScan is a procedure already in place in Symantec's support Knowledge Base.

"Everyone complaining in the discussion group was recommending switching to Trend Micro, which might be part of the reason they took it down sooner," Platt speculated.

Symantec representatives did not return calls.