Prohibiting access to data
Greg Miskelly
that monitor Data Protection Legislation.
In the EU it is illegal to for any software to prevent access to data (no
matter what the reason).
I have recently received a machine from a friend of a relative that probably
has a CMOS/MBR/NTFS (also known as CMOS/MBR/FAT) virus on board. The machine
contains 600Mb data. My initial attempt to burn a CDR with the data resulted
in the machine hanging prior to completion of the job. I tried this
operation serveral times without success.
The faulty machine is running Windows ME.
As I suspected that the machine had some form of boot sector virus on board
I did not try to create a boot disk. I therefore booted from a clean Win 98
floppy and ran F-Prot for DOS from the CD drive. F-Prot was unable to find
any virus.
I started up the machine and uninstalled Norton Anti-Virus, and some other
Norton program (I have forgotten what it was called). I then tried to
uninstall Norton Utilitis and received a stupid message saying that
UNINST.ISU was missing or corrupt so Norton refused to uninstall.
Now, when I restart the machine I get an error message saying that
Nprotect.VxD can not be found. It also tells me to download SEVINST.EXE and
run it to repair the problem. I can not find any reference to Nprotect.VxD
within the Win.ini or System.ini files so Symantec have taken it upon
themselves to create an abstruction to the boot process that does not
uninstall properly. I downloaded SEVINST.EXE and it refuses to run from a
clean boot floppy.
Upon further investigation of the problem I cam across this little titbit.
:-
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/sunset-c2000kb.nsf/pfdocs/1999193946440764
whereby Symantec have admitted to the world that they are screwing around
with the CMOS.
So.... They are screwing around in the CMOS and the MBR and do not provide
an adequate method of removing their own software (malware). I have tried to
contact Symantec (they DO NOT HAVE AN EMAIL ADDRESS!!!! - surprise,
surprise, surprise, yawn) to no avail.
After considerable annoyance I have decided to make a complaint to the Data
Protection Agency in the United Kingdom who will then forward the complaint
on to the approriate authority in Brussels.
I was going to send it today, but I have decided to wait until Monday (27th
March 2006). In order to be totally fair, I thought I had better post this
to give Symantec the chance to contact me even though they have TOTALLY
REFUSED TO DO SO. Just because they are so arrogant and rude does not mean
that should behave in the same way.
Before I retired I was the Data Protection Officer for a government
department in the United Kingdom. I assure Symantec that if my complaint is
valid they will be forced to withdraw their product from the EU.
Now.... If Symantec do not contact me and instruct me how to remove their
malicious software I WILL make the complaint, as stated, on Monday 27th
March 2006.
Clarence (Lancy) Howard
TimeTraveller
I have waded through your writings and can see that you are/were a desk job
person by the way you are attacking this issue, the fault is most likely in
the way the programs have been removed by yourself or you have not performed
enough investigation before/after doing so.
You would do far better and get far more support from the IT bods if you
simply outlined the problem and verbatim error messages etc.
99% of these isssues are fixable.
These type of problems do rear there head from time to time but it has been
my experience that most of this is down to a lack of knowledge or simply not
asking the correct questions or explaining the problem.
Besides preventing Symantec from selling the product in the EU will still
leave your problem where it is.
Thanks
TT
"Greg Miskelly" <nut...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:yNBUf.9348$KF3....@newsfe6-win.ntli.net...
Clarence (Lancy) Howard
> I have waded through your writings and can see that you are/were a desk
job
> person by the way you are attacking this issue, the fault is most likely
in
> the way the programs have been removed by yourself or you have not
performed
> enough investigation before/after doing so.
Indeed, your observation is correct. I was a minor beaurocrat but I'm now
retired. I put this ranting up in the hope that someone from Symantec might
contact me. I had been leaving messages on their web pages to no avail. I
did do a great deal of ranting and raving in the anti-virus group to try and
get some response (apparently I am now the chief Dork, whatever a Dork is).
Anyway, it worked, a gentleman from Boston (USA) named Don Kelloway made an
absolutely marvellous suggestion that resolved my problem. Link the sick
drive to a good machine as a slave and copy the data over. Worked a treat.
> You would do far better and get far more support from the IT bods if you
> simply outlined the problem and verbatim error messages etc.
>
> 99% of these isssues are fixable.
Frankly, I don't care if it is fixable. I now have the data off the machine.
I can FDISK it and reload. However, I am now playing with the sick machine
out of curiousity. It seems I might owe Symantec an apology. For various
reasons I'm beginning to suspect it might be a problem with ME. I just don't
know yet. I assure you, and Symantec if they read this, that I will post
public apologies if I find their product was not at fault.
Win95 was really the wrong place to post this but I thought I should try it
because it was the only group I could find with "symantec" in the name.
> These type of problems do rear there head from time to time but it has
been
> my experience that most of this is down to a lack of knowledge or simply
not
> asking the correct questions or explaining the problem.
> Besides preventing Symantec from selling the product in the EU will still
> leave your problem where it is.
Realistically, the threat (though technically sound, if the product was
doing what I originally thought) would be counterproductive. Do I really
want to be responsible for preventing automatic updates to millions of users
of a product because of an adverse effect on a single machine? I think the
answer to that one is no.
> TT
Many thanks for your contribution.
Clarence (Lancy) Howard
nutz...@ntlworld.com (remove one of the 7s)