Chris Barton: Nowhere fast on the software treadmill

Warning - in about two year this product may, for no apparent reason, stop working. If that unforeseen event occurs it will be necessary to upgrade to a newer version.

I'm talking about software - anitvirus software; in particular, Norton Antivirus. Of course, the product doesn't carry this consumer warning, but I reckon it, and quite a lot of other software, ought to.

Computer users are well aware of the upgrade treadmill - how software is always a work in progress. It's a frustrating state of affairs for the consumer, but something we have little choice but to be resigned to.

Fortunately the endless cycle of buy now and buy again soon mostly has a longer rotation. My Word software, for example, is the 2002 version and I have no need to update it. But antivirus software is an exception.

It happens like this. Last month my Norton Antivirus 2003 just stopped. One day it was working, the next day it wasn't. I was annoyed because I scrupulously keep up to date, automatically downloading the latest virus definitions and product updates. I was doubly annoyed to find, on running a scan, a W32. Kelvir worm infection. Not only was the software not automatically loading at startup, but it had let a nasty into my system.

I cleared out the worm and did a quick Google search - "Autoprotect won't run Norton 2003" - which showed I wasn't alone. To cut a tedious story short, I tried all the fixes suggested by product maker Symantec (www.symantec.com/techsupp/consumer.html) and when nothing worked I phoned the helpline. The people were very nice, but couldn't fix my problem so they sent me the 2005 version, which I duly installed. The result is I now have virus protection again.

But I was not pleased about being forced to upgrade so I spoke to Symantec's regional product manager, Norman Kohlberger. Yes, said Norm, regularly downloading product updates and virus definitions normally does protect you. But in the end, "you can only see so far into the future". I understood the logic - that new nasties are being created every day and sometimes the old technology just can't keep up. That's why, for example, Antivirus 2005 has much better worm protection technology than the 2003 version. But given that one also pays a subscription - $42.91 a year - to be kept up to date with virus definitions, shouldn't such product upgrades be free, or at least very cheap? Norm reckoned that at $71.05 the upgrade was good value.

I'm not so sure, especially as the new product refuses to automatically update, meaning I have to manually download and install the latest definitions and upgrades.

In despair, I decided to do something I've been putting off: upgrade my Windows XP operating system to Service Pack 2, which has been available since August. My reluctance stemmed from my subscription to the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it school of PC maintenance. But since my antivirus software was broken, maybe Service Pack 2, which fixes a phalanx of bugs in Windows XP, could fix it too.

So I breathed deeply and did the download, all 90 megabytes of it. To my surprise, after a marathon four hours and 20 minutes of installation, my PC was still running. Alas, Norton was still broken.

Back on the phone to the nice Symantec helpdesk man and we established my Windows Task Scheduler, which Norton needs to do its LiveUpdate thing, was not functioning. Windows gave a typically helpful error message: "Error 1717: The interface is unknown". The Symantec man put me on hold and came back with some information.

"It's a known error on the Microsoft Knowledge Base - the advice is to upgrade to Service Pack 2." Sigh.