Computer outage two weeks ago...

For several days, two weeks ago, patrons saw a sign on the front door telling them that all of the internet access computers were down. It was a sudden and total failure. Not a one of the five computers was able to access the internet. My initial instinct was to blame Norton Antivirus. I spent the first afternoon trying to sort out the problem myself. The following day I came in while I had a volunteer to help cover the front desk. I spent two and half hours on the phone with Symantec's (Norton's brand) technical support in India. After all that time they were able to help me get one computer back online.

The next day I spent reinstalling the OS on the other four computers. The reinstall went fine on the two Vistas. Unfortunately that meant a lot of time reinstalling the programs needed to bring each computer up to speed. The reinstall on the two remaining XP's was not successful. The Norton problem still remained. Since we have it in our budget plan to purchase a new internet access computer this year I started to get an order ready to get that done. Then I was going to replace the fifth computer with my old office computer. I know those were extreme measures, but I don't have the know-how or the time to wipe computers clean and start over.

On Friday morning I received a call from India. It was a Norton technical support rep. following up on my issues. I told him about the two remaining computers, which were now rendered useless. He suggested two different fixes to try. Since I had already spent so much time on the phone with them I was able to understand his suggestions. Low and behold, they worked.

It took me until Monday afternoon to get all of the computers fully up to speed. It was very vexing that Norton Antivirus had cost me so much time in lost productivity and I still had no idea what had happened.

On Monday, December 10, I received an interesting email. Solid Oak Software, the maker of our content filter, Cybersitter, was alerting us to the recent software conflict that Norton Antivirus had created with their product. Basically, Norton released an update which declared Cybersitter to be a virus and attacked it, rendering all computers running Cybersitter unable to access the internet. It's explained in PC Magazine Symantec Screwup Is "Worse Than Any Virus."

So now I know.