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An Entry from the Archives

David, You need to disable email monitoring. Go to the options menu and click on email. Norton still gives you complete protection, but those continous boxes will go away. I did this a couple of years ago and haven't had a problem since. Terry

Terry, doesn't disabling email monitoring mean that Symantec isn't checking my email for incoming viruses? Don't I want it to check for incoming viruses?

No David, disable email monitoring is not like telling Norton to let all virus in your email take over your computer..

Then what does email monitoring do? And if it doesn't monitor email for viruses, then why do they call it that?

It's an extra level of protection, but really unnecessary, assuming you keep your virus definitions updated. Instead of blocking your computer when one enters your email software, Norton will stop it, if and when you try to activate the infected file.

Additionally, I've had a few cases where virus files are activated simply by clicking on the email in Outlook. Norton has done a fine job of halting those. I disabled email monitoring after a conversation with a Symantec technical guy. At the time, I was Webmaster of a bunch of sites and had to monitor the "info@" addresses. It got so bad that Outlook couldn't download all my emails without Norton stopping it several times. The problem was affecting my work, so I called them. Symantec advised me it was okay, and I've never looked back.

Wow. This is so interesting.

So, you're telling me if I turn of "Scan incoming email," Norton (I mean Symantec) will still catch the viruses that are coming into my system if I should activate one by opening an attachment, etc.

Please let me know if I got this wrong since I just turned off "Scan incoming email."

Thanks!

Well, I would upgraded to NAV 2004 which has the option of silently deleting the attachments of malicious e-mails. It will also silently quarantine.

What's funny is my software firewall changes the names of potentially-malicious attachments, but NAV would still announce them, so when the use of zombie-mail increased last year I took the NAV option to then kill them without telling me. (I just checked the log and it killed 3 Netsky's in my first email check this morning.) Your NAV 2003 might also do this. As Administrator, Check Options | Internet | Email and choose one of the silent actions. On 2004 the automatically-repair option runs silently, and the log is very good at letting me see what kinds of intrusions are popular du jour.

I subscribe to Bruce Schneier's ductility principle. Multiple lines of defense are goodness. I also filter all outgoing traffic and even the email account and applications being used to send. So even if I fall, my friends don't get infected.

PS: It does nag at me a little that I use the same antivirus software on all machines of my SOHO LAN. I am considering mixing antivirus products as a way to shield myself from targetted exploits against NAV. And on the same machine, I might have an alternate scanner too, such as F-Secure (because they blog!?).

You can delete emails from the server before DL'ing your mail. If you think this might help, here's my favs:

MailWasher is pretty popular; it's free for one account, $37 for the Pro. The Pro version allows multi accounts. Both versions have rules/filters capability. You can see if there's an attached file, and the size of the email. Pro version allows previewing the mail.

PalMail is very small, fits on a floppy, doesn't require isntallation. It allows multi accounts, but it doesn't have rules. It doesn't show if there's an attachment, but does give the size of the email. Allows previewing. It's freeware, donations accepted.

David, As to your question, yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. Your computer will still be protected, unless a virus gets to you before you download the definition. Of course, in that case it wouldn't matter if you had email scanning on or not. Take the plunge. It's scary at first, but you can do it. :)

David, There is an option to tell it to scan incoming mail and just delete the junk without telling you about it.

Go to Options -> EMail and tell it to "Repair then silently delete if unsuccessful."

Jack

I just installed System Works 2004 two days ago and now I can't get onto the internet. Help

Have you tried uninstalling System Works 2004? Going back to a "Save Point" (Start > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore)?

Per orchmid and Jack Vinson, NAV 2003 does have a 'silent delete' option for mail. I have it checked, but it doesn't seem to work (still get the warning, which stops mail download).

Maybe I'll just go 'naked', turn off email scanning and let NAV handle this if I try to run the file.

I don't know if you could help, but I have a question regarding Norton Firewall and Outlook. I've installed it on 15 PC's in our network. One of the PC's (where the problem resides), has Internet Security. One of our employees sends email to a distribution list of people and it makes it to all on the list, except one particular pc. The message appears to come in then gets removed/deleted. The message has a word doc and is clean of any viruses etc. Everyone else has norton anti virus and Norton Firewall and they're configured the same. How do I correct this problem where one particular user. I can forward the email in question to the user and he receives it fine.

Help if you can...

thanks,

Phil Braniff

I have the same problem as Rob....I have the repair then silent delete option on but it just does what it always did - interrupt the downloads with series of dialogs that force me to acknowledge before the downloads will proceed. That's a drag. Any ideas why this option isn't working right?

can any one help ? when i used to send an e-mail using out look then a lil window used to pop up and it would show you that it was checking the out going message, it's suddenly stopped working, i haven't disabled it in the setting's yet it still not working, is my pc still proteced ? and why won't it work any more.?

Thanks people

Have you tried running Norton AntiVirus from your Start menu or Taskbar or just out of the file system? It will tell you whether it's active or not and whether it's checking email.

I have the same problem - from 2002 to 2004 NAV Pro. Even when you have "silently delete" checked, it will, EVERYTIME, alert you with an extremely annoying pop-up that it found a virus (blah blah blah) and you have to click 'ok'.
I get about 30 of these per hour!

I have this same problem and nothing works. I have tried all options listed here and still the pop up warnings continue. Is there a registry tweak for this or something else. Otherwise I will have to install Automate and make it close the boxes automatically.

when i conect intenet winxp shut down

Ihavehad trouble with Anti norton, it tells me I have had 3 viruses that have deleted. but when i virus check, it tells me "Auto ptotect is off" and"E.mail scanning error"Ihave tried every option but I cant repair,it just wont go to "Auto Protect ON" and scanner on I'm really stumped!
KIM

Guys, the option that we all need in NAV is to silently repair or silently delete, not repair and silently delete, the thing that is going on with all of us is that NAV is actually repairing the file, it it's just telling us "repair succesfull" and we need to click finish orelse the computer stays frozen, this is the problem, the email is being repaired, but is there any way to repair it silently? when you have answered the question, my and your problem is solved.

Adding NAV*.tmp to the Auto-Protect exclusions list sorted this out for me (guessing that the problem is virus attachments being detected by both Email Scanning and Auto-Protect when temporary files are used, possibly when scanning zipped attachments).
Your mileage may vary!

Try McAfee

I am so annoyed! This is bad guys... Basically, one of my friends sent me a VBulletin attachment, Okay nothing new, just some interesting info. Yet, When I open it... WHAM! Goodbye Symantec Antivirus (Wont Work)... WHAM! Goodbye MSN Messenger (Wont Work)... WHAM Goodbye Patience... Can someone help me, the filename had my email address inside it, so I thought it might be some strange info on me =.= Please help me, this is on my laptop and I am going back to school soon and it will not be good!

Try restoring to a previous system restore point. (Google it if you don't know what I mean.)

Install AVG antivirus and see if it can root out the problem.

Install an anti-spyware package such as Counterspay or Lavaware's and see if that can clean it up.

Don't open any more executable attachments!

I'm trying to help my cousin with Norton Antivirus 2003, she's uninstalled and deleted the files and is attempting to reinstall from the disk (I'm not sure why she started the process but this is where we are.) From what I can tell, we've stripped away all the little pieces of Symantec and Norton on her PC except the "live reg" component won't uninstall. It insists that NAV still needs it. I've gone into task manager and looked through all running processes and see nothing that looks like NAV or Symantec. When we try to reinstall from the software disc we get the message that the version on the disc can't be installed until all components from "previous" versions are uninstalled from the hard drive (mind you they are the same versions). I'm at a loss and she's stuck without any firewall or virus protection on a DSL conncetion. She called Symantec/Norton but they no longer support 2003 so they wouldn't help her.

i am gets billion messages of symantec email scanner. what this and how can help?

Help! Symantec won't let me activate my product as I reinstalled on my laptop--it says I exceeded the amount of installs--I can't reach them by phone or chat--anyone know what's up?

IS This Wat U mean???

http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=symantecuf6.jpg

Plz help meeee......

If u can plz email me @ Godfree@hotmail.co.uk