kev asleep at the wheel, 40 miles left to go

removing the norton internet security 2008 toolbar from firefox

I run Winbloze. I know, I know, but I have had a much better experience with Windows environments on my desktop than I have had with my Ti or my MBP. Windows comes with risks, so to help mitigate (again, I know, I know) those risks I use Norton Internet Security.

My subscription ran out a couple days ago, so I upgraded to NIS 2008. NIS 2008 includes anti-phishing protection, which I already have. NIS wants me to use its anti-phishing, so helpfully installs a toolbar in Firefox. It doesn’t tell me it’s going to do this, nor does it give me a choice, and there’s no way I can see to remove it from within NIS, only disable fishing protection. This pisses me off, so…

DO NOT WANT.

If this kind of behaviour pisses you off as well, and you want to stick with the built-in protection Firefox offers, you can remove the toolbar. Fire up your trusty file mangler, and head on over to the Firefox installation directory (usually C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox). Under that directory is a subdirectory called “components”. In the “components” directory is a file called “coFFPlgn.dll”; move it somewhere safe and restart Firefox.

Toolbar gone!

Thanks Symantec, next time try providing it as an uninstallable plugin or, even better, an extension. Fucktards.

Update: Toolbar back! Every time you reboot, it “helpfully” restores the file. I have asked Symantec how I turn it off permanently. I think I know the answer already.

Update 2: Johan has a good workaround, as follows: After playing about for a bit I tried an old trick, close all instances of firefox, go to the components folder as mentioned above, and remove the coFFPlgn.dll file. Create a new empty file, name it the very same, coFFPlgn.dll and set it to be read only.

the null file is ignored by ffox, and marking it read-only will prevent Norton from over-writing it. works nicely for me. recommended. thanks, Johan!

did u really NEED nis 2008?

It has served me well in the past. It’s not fantastic, but this little bit of intrusiveness may tip the balance to another product.

[...] all the details here [...]

So how do you remove it? The exact same thing happened to me today.

i think he means uninstalling.

Would renaming the stupid file you moved to something like: stupid.file.i.removed.goddammit keep the helpful reinstallation demon (punny, what?) from finding it to put back? Or does the demon recreate the file?

I don’t use any kind of NIS or commercial firewall crap. Nobody’s interested in what I have on my machine apparently.

Oh, I do use the FREE SuperAntiSpyWare app … for the same reason I have been known to purchase books and wine: I liked the name :-)

Don’t laugh! I’ve found some really great books and wine I really like this way.

Oh, and “Hi”

Same here!!! NIS 2007 went stange so uninstalled and ended up with 2008 via norton account yesterday.I use firefox for the ease of personal configuration DO NOT NEED A TOOLBAR I cannot switch off, thanks Symantec. Anyhow now using Fullerscreen addon in FF you can lose the toolbar in this.

Hi again,
Oh dear! meant strange not stange, also when using Fullerscreen make sure the page is maximized first before clicking or page may lock up.

I had this same problem tonight, and found how to hide/turn it off. In FireFox, just go to View -> Toolbars. Uncheck ‘Show Norton Toolbar’. Simple as that.

Also, if you don’t want the phishing protection on at all, go to the Norton Internet Security tab in the Norton program, go to Settings, and then to Transaction Security. Click on Phishing protection, and then Turn Off.

Hope this helps. :)

Hi John,

Thanks for the additional info.

My issue isn’t hiding or disabling the functionality of the plugin, my issue is with Symantec installing the plugin without permission/consent in the componentes directory, and not providing me with a way to remove it. The plugin consumes resources, has access to info from the browser, and is closed-source code.

Hiding it isn’t what I would like to do, I want it removed permanently. What bugs me is that Symantec has taken away my choice in the matter. I’m still waiting on a response from them on whether or not they’ll offer a method to remove the DLL permanently in the future, and will post an update if I receive it.

Thanks again for your post!

Not a problem!

Oh, and I gotcha. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind having the option to totally remove it as well. :)

Me again,

Doh! never thought of looking there, absolutely brilliant.

Many thanks John.

Whoops, also also:

Janice – Hi! Unfortunately, when you rename it NIS just copies back over top next time you reboot. They’ve learned from the malware companies how to make an app, um, persistent.

Add me to the list of people who are perturbed that Norton installed a toolbar to Firefox without asking, then didn’t provide a way to remove it.

I have an open support ticket with Symantec, but already it smacks of the runaround: E-Mail 1 — remove the related dll file, which of course is put back when you reboot; E-Mail 2 — remove the related add-on from the Firefox extensions (huh? there is no related add-on); E-Mail 3 — uninstall and reinstall because I didn’t completely remove Norton AV 2007 before updating.

Is there any way we can approach Norton as a group and get past the first line of tech. support nonsense.

Yeah, the Phishing toolbar really sucks, but yes ..View/toolbars/show norton toolbar is the spot, got it off my screen, but, i am not at all happy with the new 2008 upgrade, wish i would have declined it like i did the first 2 times they emailed me about it. It kinda blows

After having done a bit of mail-exchanging with the NIS support guys I’ve found by reading between the lines that the toolbar is not intended to be removable. However I might give a tip to those who want to make sure it doesnt reinstall itself, as annoying the fact may be that it still tries to.
After playing about for a bit I tried an old trick, close all instances of firefox, go to the components folder as mentioned above, remove the coFFPlgn.dll file. create a new empty file, name it the very same, coFFPlgn.dll and set it to be read only.
after rebooting a couple of times, it remains blank and the Norton toolbar is no longer available under the firefox view -> toolbars menu.
If this works, or not, for anyone else do drop a line here.

Thanks all….you guys are a great help to the less than technical among us….I have a company owned laptop so did not want to remove the coFFPlgn.dll file and create a new empty file; I just right clicked on the icon, went to Properties and changed the default from whatever it was to read only and it SEEMS to have worked…will post again if the pesky thing changes.

thanks. I spent hours trying to get rid of this nasty thing.

Just installed 2008 and Firefox wouldn’t start. Removed coFFPlgn.dll as described and it comes up… thanks for the tip, and thanks a bunch Symantec…

Thanks people things have speeded up since I disabled the stoopid Fishy Phisy toolbar..before that streaming stuff and every browswer window switch made music/videos jump…

thanks, i was horrified at the nasty big ass toolbar. very bad, and no option to remove it thats sucks hard.

at least now its hidden.:/

Thanks, I despise the stupid screen area hogging toolbar

Thanks for the instructions to remove the Norton Toolbar. I could hide it but even when hidden it had the nasty effect of wiping out form data whenever I would Reload a web form or go Back to it. Disabling it per your instructions fixed that.

Thanks for the tip about removing the dll file and creating a blank one. Worked like a charm for me. The Norton toolbar was breaking everything. Roboform and the Web Developer toolbar both started misbehaving when Norton installed the toolbar.

Thanks again!

Hey I read your complaints and had the exact same issue.

By a sort of weird coincidence I got angry and clicked randomly on the toolbar 2 or 3 times. And it disappeared.

Hope it was actually serendipity and might be able to help someone else.

I tried replacing the dll file with a blank one and it worked, but when I restarted, the norton toolbar was still there. So I just made a quick batch file that works perfectly for me.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MHCYFVRK

Do note I have only tested it on Windows XP so far. You can look at the source by editing in notepad to be sure there is nothing unsafe about it.

Hey Mike,

It’s important that, once you make the zero length file, that you make it read-only. If it’s not read-only, Norton will just overwrite it.

oooh yea, forgot to make it read only. Makes sense. I just tested it out and works fine now. Thanks!

Thank you so much, that crappy Phishing protection was making me crash every five minutes :D

Thank you so much
I was going berserk with that Norton antiphising crappy toolbar. You’ve got it right.

[...] http://kev.deadsquid.com/?p=663 [...]

All you need to do is go to the View tab on Firefox and uncheck Norton Toolbar – and Voila, it disappears.

P.S. need to go to “Toolbars” under View to get to uncheck option.

george: it disappears, but it’s still loaded in the browser. all that does is hide it from view.

This is disgusting.
I run Norton 2008 on my computer, and I just ran my copy of portable firefox on here to perform a software update on it.

It just forcefully installed the bloody toolbar into my PORTABLE USB COPY, WHAT.

Thanks a bunch! Another thing you can do, rather than deleting the coFFPlgn.dll file, right-click it, select “Open With” and select Notepad. At this point press Ctrl+A to highlight everything in the file and hit delete, then save. Then set it as Read Only to keep Norton from rewriting it.

Thank you sooooooooo much!! I just upgraded to the new Norton 2008, saw the Firefox toolbar, and wanted to kill something. Symantec isn’t very nice about giving you “options” because that is synonymous with “virus that will destroy you, your computer, and your puppy.”

Thanks so much guys. I was pretty mad when that ridiculous waste-of-space toolbar came up, and even more so when I couldn’t get rid of it. Norton can eat it.

I’m using Firefox 2.0.0.12. I could hide the toolbar & free up space by using Firefox menus: View | Toolbars & uncheck “Show Norton Toolbar”

Hi Amit, as mentioned a few times in this thread, all that does is hide the plugin from sight. It’s still loaded, and the object of the exercise is to cast it out, not just stuff it under the bed :)

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Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences with this. I also was having severe stability problems with Firefox after installing NIS 2008. I could not find a way to uninstall the Toolbar until I found your post along with the updates on the read-only attribute trick. Keep after Symantec until they promise to play nice.

thanks alot!! it works for me, the toolbar lags my surfing :>

Thanks mate, after a few months of simply having the toolbar disabled, it started to ‘unhide’ itself every time a new tab opened. What that all about? Anyway, that blank file trick fixed me right up.

Thank you! I didn’t mind Norton running this, I just didn’t want to see it, oh wells. PEACE!

I hate Norton. I’m only using it because it came free with my new laptop, once it’s expired I’m switching to Trend. This intrusiveness is absolutely disgusting. Who knows where else the roots of this monster went. -_-

I hate Norton. This intrusiveness on my privacy is unacceptable. God knows what else it’s doing.

Agreed, and AGREED.

Dear Symantec: It’s 2008. Stop this crap.

Dear Kev and friends: Thank you.

thanks for this tip. as soon as I saw the new crudware in firefox, i wanted to get rid of it. thanks again.

Thanks for the help. What an f’n nuisance it was, who gives Symantec the right to waist our valuable time.

Thank you once again !

Thank you KEV! It is a great feeling to finally get rid of Norton’s ridiculous toolbar.

Cheers!

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Kev,

Thank you for sorting this out. I’ve been having trouble with Norton 360 and Firefox 3.0/3.0.1 and Google Notebook extension for Firefox. I couldn’t get the Firefox Process to stop, and had to kill it w/ Task Manager. If I didn’t kill the process, and started FF again, FF wouldn’t open my profile, so it was unusable.

I thought I was left with two alternatives, turn off Norton 360 autoprotect or not use the Notebook extension. I knew the two were incompatible.

Your post about removing the Norton 360 phishing toolbar and substituting a same name, 0 byte, read only file did the trick for now. I suspect it will stick through Windows XP SP3 shutdowns and startups.

So I have auto protect and Notebook extension, but no toolbar, which I didn’t want and had Phishing detection turned off anyway.

Good going!
Skip

See if the Norton Toolbar shows up in the Extensions list in Firefox (“Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions”) and disable it from there. See the Norton 360 forum thread, “Firefox processes will not end. All posted fixes tried” at
http://community.norton.com/norton/board/message?board.id=Norton_360&thread.id=2267&view=by_date_ascending&page=3
Quote from johna:
Another way of removing the Toolbar is to go into Tools>Add Ons>Norton_Tool_Bar>Disable. This way you don’t have to uninstall the whole thing, just disable it.

thanks yo :D i hate propoganda clutter

“Thanks Symantec, next time try providing it as an uninstallable plugin or, even better, an extension. Fucktards.”

Fucktards indeed.

many thanks for the simple instructions …. nice touch!

Thanks for the fix. The Norton toolbar blew out my RoboForm2Go toolbar. Roboform support was clueless about the issue.

Thank you so much for the workaround! I decided it needed to be removed since I discovered it would set the sanitizeOnShutdown (“Always clear my private data when I close Firefox”) setting to true every time Firefox starts. As a result we never had any history! (It may only happen with Firefox 3–I don’t think the problem started until then.)

The Norton Tool Bar was making my life hell for the last 2 days. I was already looking at some other anti-Virus Programs to escape from it. If I would not have found this site, I would have deleted Norton entirely.

Thanks!!

Me agrees much. Super douchey not to give an option not to install, or to uninstall. Thanks for the sexy help.

Thanks. I followed these directions and it worked.

While using my brother’s computer, I have noticed that Norton consumes allot of resources, and wants to run updates about 8 times a day, so I was already annoyed with it. Then the Norton package detected my portable FireFox software and nailed a toolbar to that too.
Modifying other programs without permission is inexcusable. I searched the menus and “help” files to no avail. I searched their website which says nothing on the subject, and had difficulty even finding any way to contact the company. Finally I found a phone number, and after 10 minutes of menus and transfers, I finally had the opportunity to ask someone “How do I remove the toolbar?”
He proceeded to describe to me how I can hide the toolbar, and I said “I know how to hide toolbars – I want to REMOVE the toolbar. It was installed without my permission, and I have been searching the menus and helpfiles and I can’t find any information regarding the REMOVAL of the toolbar…”
…Without another word, the bastard HUNG-UP on me!
Indians are usually very polite, why did my question provoke such a response?
What does Symantec GAIN by installing and keeping that toolbar on our browsers without our consent? It’s possible that they believe that it’s good advertising to have NORTON in bold letters on your browser, but I tend to suspect more sinister motives… I hope that some hackers wiser than I can figure out what’s going on.
The workaround described here (Creating a null, read-only version of the offending file) seems to have worked perfectly, by the way. Thank you very much!

But, as others have mused in this thread – I wonder what ELSE Nortin is doing without our knowledge…

While using my brother’s computer, I have noticed that Norton consumes allot of resources, and wants to run updates about 8 times a day, so I was already annoyed with it. Then the Norton package detected my portable FireFox software and nailed a toolbar to that too.
Modifying other programs without permission is inexcusable. I searched the menus and “help” files to no avail. I searched their website which says nothing on the subject, and had difficulty even finding any way to contact the company. Finally I found a phone number, and after 10 minutes of menus and transfers, I finally had the opportunity to ask someone “How do I remove the toolbar?”
He proceeded to describe to me how I can hide the toolbar, and I said “I know how to hide toolbars – I want to REMOVE the toolbar. It was installed without my permission, and I have been searching the menus and helpfiles and I can’t find any information regarding the REMOVAL of the toolbar…”
…Without another word, the bastard HUNG-UP on me!
Indians are usually very polite, why did my question provoke such a response?
What does Symantec GAIN by installing and keeping that toolbar on our browsers without our consent? It’s possible that they believe that it’s good advertising to have NORTON in bold letters on your browser, but I tend to suspect more sinister motives… I hope that some hackers wiser than I can figure out what’s going on.
The workaround described here (Creating a null, read-only version of the offending file) seems to have worked perfectly, by the way. Thank you very much!

But, as others have mused in this thread – I wonder what ELSE Nortin is doing without our knowledge…

I have thoroughly tried every suggestion here and I cannot rid myself of the Norton 360 toolbar in Firefox 3. There are no listings inside of Firefox 3 for add-ons, extentions, etc. for any Norton product. Norton 360, of course, offers no direct option to unload the toolbar from Firefox 3 and none of the tricks listed here are working. So, I am uninstalling Norton and I will not load up another Norton product again. This load-up-my-pograms-without-permission crap is an old AOL trick and I never wanted anything to do with AOL and now Norton has been added to the list. I even tried, in vain, to use the Norton live tech chat feature on their website but the plugin asks to use IE 5.5 or higher. That is ridiculous. They just corrupted my Firefox 3 browser with their product but can’t seem to support Firefox 3 for a live chat? I sent a polite but matter-of-fact letter to Symantec HQ telling them they just lost a customer.

I have successfully removed the Norton 360 toolbar even after reboot by removing the registry entry. Open regedit and type in the search Norton Toolbar and let it search, when it shows up delete it. No adverse effect with the 360 is noticed.

Thanks to Kev on this post. I was having the same issue as Skip in that my Firefox 3+ process would not kill with Norton 360 installed. I didn’t figure out it was Norton 360 until I installed it on another computer and the same issue with Firefox appeared there as well. I was about to uninstall Norton when I ran across this post. Thus far after creating the read only coFFPlgn.dll file the issue is gone. Keeping my fingers crossed. Thanks all!

Thanks ! Works perfectly, just what i needed

Thank you so much! You are the man!

i have nis09 and thers no “coFFPlgn.dll” in there … somebody got an idea?

Stiller, it’s there in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Norton\{0C55…26E7}\Norton\coFFPlgn\components\

The most effective way to deal with this is uninstall Norton completely and forget about it.
Norton is not the only program available.

Thank you very much!

Symantec is a bitch

Thank you! Worked like a charm.

in firefox i just went to tools>addons, then clicked on “extensions”, then clicked on “norton toolbar” and hit the “disable” button. seems to work so far…

hi jeff,

I believe that’s only available with NIS 2009. 2008 is a pain in the derriere :)

Thanks very much for the uninstall trick. What a relief after my friend’s drunk girlfriend turned on my computer last night and hit ‘yes’ to the norton install popup that i had forgotten to take care of. (without asking what it was of course)

I am in your debt sir.

Here is whar the toolbar help says:

Hiding and showing the Norton toolbar

You can hide the Norton toolbar if you do not want to see the evaluation of every Web page that you visit. However, you will still be notified of suspicious and known fraudulent pages or if an error needs your attention.

To hide or show the Norton toolbar:
1. At the top of your browser window, click View.
2. On the Toolbars submenu, do one of the following:
3. Uncheck Norton Toolbar to hide the toolbar.
4. Check Norton Toolbar to show the toolbar.

RS: I’ve addressed this already. That just hides the display of the toolbar. It’s still loaded, still watching, and still consuming resources. That’s not what I want, along with a few others.

Maybe someone can help me out here because I am completely stuck…

I have Firefox portable on my flashdrive with U3. Has worked great for me. I recently put my flashdrive into my work computer, which contains the incredibly annoying Norton 360. It proceeded to install the phishing toolbar on my Firefox Portable.

I followed every step listed above. First I removed the coFFPlgn.dll file (from my flashdrive…something like h://PortableApps/Firefox…Components/coFFPlgn.dll).

Didn’t remove it. So I tried creating a blank one, and making it read only.

Didn’t work.

So then I found that there was a version of that DLL on the main computer harddrive (located at c:\Program Files\Common\…\browser\coFFPlgn.dll).

So I removed that. No go. So I renamed a blank file with that name and made it read only. No go.

When I put my flashdrive into my home computer it doesn’t appear at all, but whenever I put it into my work computer it is there…taunting me…

Any help? Anyone know of this problem specifically with Firefox Portable?

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. :)

I develop PHP/MySQL applications and after installing/removing/installing/removing… :) N360/NIS2009, I lost the access to them.
Unbelievable that Peter Norton with his know-how had made such a product…!

And now how can I log (again) in to my applications? (I have no anti-virus installed and the problem remains…).

It very well was working. Thanks……………..

Norton came pre-installed on my Lenovo. If Norton came pre-installed on your machine PLEASE CALL YOUR VENDOR AND COMPLAIN. If possible request an service ticket and make them remove it for you instead of removing it yourself.

Kev,
I know you posted this fix a couple years ago but I just found it and it worked perfectly! Thanks! Tomas

On firefox you can just go to Tools >> Add-ons >> Extensions >> and then disable it.

The infamous coFFPlgn.dll was there, but MC-CAM’s good advice worked perfectly. Thanks Kev, MC and all!

Sorry… infamous coFFPlgn.dll NOT there, but do what MC-CAM said.

Thanks a bunch everyone who contributed. When I first started looking I just found the fix where you delete the two files {7BA52691-1876-45ce-9EE6-54BCB3B04BBC}-and- {8545daff-ad1e-493f-a37e-eed1ac79682b} in the FF extensions folder, but it’s only gone for that session. But when combined with the bogus read-only dll that did the trick. Thanks again. -ct

Thanks everyone who contributed. When I first started looking I found the trick where you delete the two files {7BA52691-1876-45ce-9EE6-54BCB3B04BBC} and
{8545daff-ad1e-493f-a37e-eed1ac79682b} from the extensions folder, but it’s only good for that session. But when combined with the read-only decoy dll it works perfect for me. Thanks again -ct

Sorry for the double-post, I have NoScript and the 1st post didn’t show up. But just wanted to say I have Norton 360 which I just got as an upgrade to just the Antivirus because I thought it was a good deal. Anyway I just noticed that “Product Feedback” link at the top of the configuration screen and will be letting them know how surprised we are that we made it this far without that built-in self-healing capability. -ct

OR you can just try to erase all the content of the file with the notepad and mark the file to read only. Before, make a copy in a safe place. That’s what i’ve done! hopw it works not just until next boot.

installing difrent sofware

All Symantec products are rubbish. Avoid like the plague. Anyone tried deactivating the we’ll-debit-your-VISA-card-by- default-to-renew-you-subscription scam? It doesn’t work. Following the news that vast numbers of VISA accounts were stolen by operatives in Symantec’s Indian callcenter,I’ve changed my card number and alerted my attorney. Symantec, you’ve been warned.

If you have Windows 7… next to the URL bar is a image thing that sort of looks like a leaf. Right click on it, and there will be an option to remove the Norton Toolbar.

Dan: That’s for newer versions of NIS. The specific version of NIS I’m talking about here is pretty stealthy, and the method you outline doesn’t apply (I believe) in removing it completely.

I have Firefox, Vista and Norton 2009. I cannot find that dll file anywhere (can’t search for it in Vista, have gone to the files I have been directed to in here and don’t have Documents and Settings in Vista but want to remove the awful thing as I have disabled it but my Firefox now keeps crashing. Can anybody tell me where to find coFFPlgn.dll in Vista please, thanks so much for your time :-)

I’ve got the same problem as Em, except that I run Norton 360. For the past few months, it didn’t show up, but all of a sudden, for the past three days, it won’t go away.

And, as Em, this dll file isn’t there.

[...] when you restart Norton will restore the files without asking you and turn the taskbar on again. Kev undertook a terrifying journey to the heart of darkness to discover how to remove the toolbar… got no help from Symantec and finally discovered that [...]

EXACT same problem as Em.

If I can’t resolve this soon, I’m deleting Norton and using something else.

Gentlemen, i have another idea…
I think the problem is with the mozilla, because they don’t put any rules about plugins, like chrome ? If you look on your extensions window, you’ll see a lot of no removable extensions, like norton, microsoft .net, etc… So, let’s start to use another brownser while mozillas’s foundation don’t do anything about this…

I too would like to remove the Norton Basterds Toolbar completely. My problem is…I don’t know how to make an empty file. Can you help me do that? Thanks.

Ok, after trying to clean up my browser a bit. No need to delete files or anything.
If you open a FF window, go to the View menu. Then under ‘Toolbars’ you just click on what options you want to appear. If it is in the window it is ticked, so simply untick the Norton Toolbar.

I have just had a Norton and it did not reactivate the toolbar at all.

For those of you running Windows 7 with Norton Anti-Virus, your file will have been (sneakily) moved from C:/Program Files/Firefox/ to C:/Program Files/Norton Security Suite/Engine/3.8.0.41/

But be warned — even with administrator privileges, Symantec has the bloody nerve to deny you access to the files on YOUR computer! The only way to replace it with a null file seems to be starting your computer up in Safe Mode.

Fuck you, Symantec, for saying I can’t do stuff on MY computer! (Plus, Norton is extremely invasive… their automatic installation of this toolbar without your permission is just one example.)

I had Norton tech support in my machine remotely for over 2.5 hours last night and they could not remove the toolbar. Like all of you I am disgusted. This the replacement for McAfee from Comcast. It is neither as strong or user friendly. I do not like their intrusive tactics in to my pc.

When you say create a new empty file, do you mean a .dll file? I have no idea how to make a .dll file. Can I make a word file and CALL it .dll and set it to read only? If not, can you SEND me the empty file you are referring to so I can use it?

I want this thing gone too. It pisses me off!

I’ve NIS for several years (the real stuff, not the 360 version). I alternated with BitDefender and Kaspersky in the past. I’m pretty happy with all, and all have their issues. This year I just tried all of them again because I needed to have some “free period” on my second PC during 2 months until my old NIS subscription expired on the first one and I can start with a fresh “1 user 3 PCs” pack.

I was about to choose BitDefender which I like very much the interface and higher clarity. I dislike a lot the NIS interface, it’s useless, everything is always one more click further, more advertising like than efficient, and it’s an insult to the intelligence for “advanced” users. I saw my second PC somehow experiencing short periods (no longer than a couple of seconds) with everything frozen from time to time, I suspect BT to be the source. So I left with NIS for on more year.

However I think it’ll be the last one.

After I reinstalled the new package, it started to impose me the shortcut on the desktop, in the start menu, and the Firefox toolbar. I cannot find an option to prevent them to reappear at each reboot after I’ve manually removed them (deletion of XP shortcuts, unchecking of the toobar entry in FF). I’m tired of such clowns that see the customer’s PC like a field where they can do what they want without asking and confirming. It’s supposed to be to “protect” basic users, to prevent them deleting something that is critical for their well being. Actually it’s just a lazy programmer’s practice, a practice that consists to not include small code that is needed to offer appropriate options in the installation program and in the interface.

What I also saw is about the “block unused ports” option nightmare. I needed to open an additional port, so I added a rule to “allow incoming” traffic on that port, but I was not working, my PC was sending TCP SYN/RST responses to SYN requests from the requester (without a network analyzer you cannot know what NIS is doing silently). So I looked at the 250 pages user manual. Nothing on “blocking unused ports”, just that it exists and if you want to allow a port, you need to stop this feature. Well that’s nice, you declare a new port use in the rule, but it’s not enough…! you must also disable the protection on all the unused ports… At least this is what you understand with the very few data on this feature. That’s incredible !

I don’t agree with people that say NIS is bad, and doesn’t detect malware or abnormal traffic. It’s just not what I see, but there are reasons to dislike NIS, and that’s related to the way it is unfriendly to understand and customize. The next in my pick list for next year will probably be BitDefender. So guys at BT, please solve these small freezes, and that’ll be great to me !