Windows XP SP3 Conflicts With Norton Software

Windows XP Service Pack 3 continues to have difficulties playing nice with other software, or vice-versa. Now it’s been found that Norton software behaves strangely after SP3 is installed. Just what SP3 needs…more good news.

On the other hand, it’s a good case for dumping Norton. Back in the day I was a big fan of the original Norton Utilities. Unfortunately, those days are long gone and if I buy a computer now with Norton on it, one of the first things I do is uninstall Norton and put AVG on the machine. I happen to prefer AVG, but there are many viable alternatives these days to the bloated, bog-slow, intrusive Norton software.

McAfee Antivirus is almost as bad, so I won’t have that on any of my machines, either. I haven’t heard of any conflicts between McAfee Antivirus and SP3 yet, but it won’t surprise me if I do. We use the enterprise version of McAfee Antivirus at work and we’ve had a number of conflicts with our enterprise software applications that were traced back to McAfee Antivirus and required patches or workarounds for one or both applications.

It’s becoming even more obvious that unless you desperately need SP3 for some reason, you should avoid upgrading until Microsoft and the hardware and software folks get these issues worked out. They will get resolved, it’s just a question of when.

John The Geek

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