the Trend Micro [for Servers] Experience / The Microsoft Effect

McAfee

My first enterprise antivirus experience was McAfee.  We’re talking probably late 1980’s and there was nobody at the company interested in viruses so I figured I’d take a look.  I managed to clean an infection and decided we needed a corporate antivirus and policy, thus McAfee.  This was a time where the problem was primarily confined to infected Microsoft Word and Excel files, whether from sneakernet or email.

The next step was the next company, which also had no central antivirus policy.  I was the expert, largely as I was the only one who really used an antivirus.  Remember this: if you show any interest or do a job once, it is yours for life.  This time it was Symantec (Norton).

SYMANTEC:

Symantec, like Microsoft, got fat and bloated.  It apparently also got translated into some Chinese or Cyrillic alphabet, as one can’t do anything with it once it’s installed.  If you want to uninstall it (heaven forbid), you can try from the central console but it will fail a good percentage of the time.  You can try locally at the computer but that’s not guaranteed either.  If Symantec’s own uninstaller fails, which it does often, you’re up the proverbial creek.

Your first step, the most important step and one you must remember regardless of the situation, is never to call Support.  Regardless of product, you will be connected to India.  India has a computer and (hopefully) the same access to the Symantec web page you do, only you have a better chance of finding the information yourself.  Unfortunately, the Support site is a mess, like the call center, and you will find five relevant documents that address your issue, all of which disagree with each other.  In short, you cannot get there from here.

The most relevant document to find on the Symantec Support site is which registry entries to remove to fool Windows and other programs into believing that no Symantec products are installed.  Yes, you have to wind up editing the registry to remove Symantec products as best you can.

Needless to say, Symantec products are not welcome where I work, unless there is simply no other solution (which there always is).

MOVING ELSEWHERE:

I made the decision to use different antiviruses on desktops and servers for the sake of safety and redundancy.  Kaspersky installed and worked well on the servers and it was decided to move the desktops to it when our Symantec support (such as it was) ended.  Kaspersky includes a Symantec uninstaller, which works about as well as Symantec’s, which is to say it barely works.  We now have to visit almost every desktop to remove Symantec before we can install anything else.  This violates my Main Rule: Do Not Go to Every Desktop.

In the meantime we purchased Trend Micro’s antivirus for our servers.  Unfortunately Kaspersky wants to reboot the servers after it uninstalls, meaning this work has to be done after hours because we can’t reboot production servers.

Back in the Symantec days, you got a small box with a cd and a book on installing the software.  In these enlightened times, you get a .pdf from the vendor with some sort of number that can be a registration key, serial number, activation code, or the key to a Swiss bank account (that the US gov’t is trying to crack).  Regardless of what you call it, the number is irrelevant: it will not work with any product or allow you to register or obtain further bizarre number sequences.

Trend’s .pdf also includes about ten pages of legalese.   You will note, as I did, that nowhere within this document is contained a single piece of wisdom relating to obtaining, installing, or operating the software.  I went to Trend’s web page to download the software, as I figured this was a fairly decent guess.  The .pdf indicated I had purchased Office Scan for Servers.  Unfortunately this product did not appear anywhere on the download page.  The product that made sense was Server Protect, which I downloaded and found out was the incorrect product, which wouldn’t take any sequence of numbers I had to register.

Elsewhere on the page I located Office Protect but there wasn’t a listing for servers and the version did not agree with the .pdf version.  Once bitten, I figured caution was the answer.  It turned out not to matter, as the Infinite Invisible Special Registration Sequence<tm> refused to allow me to register any software at all.  Support had emailed me the same numbers that were on my .pdf so that wasn’t much help either.

My agitation level was ratcheting up nicely, especially for a Friday.

Fearing another Symantec Experience<tm> and figuring I was ten minutes away from returning the software, I called Support.  The extremely helpful lady, whose only accent was from the Southwest, directed me to the proper place to download software.  It was under Client/Server.   Of course it was under Client/Server: the product listed on the license was Office Scan for Server.  There was simply no way anyone could know this.  It is not written anywhere.  Never having used Trend products, I was further in the dark (I think).

But I managed to return to something approaching calm.

Once downloaded, Office Scan for Server installed in no time.  It insisted on installing an Apache web server, which for some reason needed all sorts of ActiveX controls to function.  Another nightmare…. there is simply no reason to run this nonsense on a server.  Plus you’re locked into Internet Explorer (or IE Tab within Firefox), which isn’t a happy (or secure) thing.

I tried pulling an install from a different server, which also wanted all sorts of garbage installed into IE.  Not good from an Enterprise standpoint.

There is a control console also, which I tried to install.  It immediately coughed and told me it had to install “Visual C++ 2005 …” and might reboot.  If so, start it over again.   Sure, let’s maybe reboot a server just to install a component to install some software.

Fortunately it didn’t reboot.  Unfortunately I got this message: “Setup Unsuccessful”.  It told me to try again and if it failed, call Support.  So I rebooted.  And I tried again.  And I got “Setup Unsuccessful” again.  And it provided no additional information as to why setup was unsuccessful.

The agitation level was back up over previous levels.  What kind of software is this?

THE MICROSOFT EFFECT:

I have a theory (run while you still can).

The Microsoft Effect is the name I gave to my theory.  We as consumers have put up with disgustingly bad, unsafe, and user-hostile software forever and it’s getting worse.  Because it keeps getting worse, we are becoming immune to it to the effect that we will accept anything that comes down the lane.  We will beat ourselves up trying to acquire, install, and operate the software, thinking there must be something wrong with us for having so difficult a time.  As it turns out, the software is faulty; there’s nothing wrong with us (aside from the normal stuff).

I have dumped Symantec for this reason.   I have personally dumped Microsoft for this reason. I strongly suggest that we, as consumers, refuse to tolerate this nonsense from the software companies.  Remember - if we refuse to buy it, they have to fix it  (Vista being a prime example).

TRY ANOTHER SERVER

As an exercise, we built a virtual server just for Trend, with more horsepower and memory, per their specs.  I got Office Scan for Server installed, it installed Apache and 27 different ActiveX controls, then I started delplying Office Scan to some other servers, using the new machine as a master console.

Meanwhile I didn’t have enough time to install the actual console that I downloaded and had all the difficulty with earlier.  I have to vpn in over the weekend and finish the server installs because they require reboots, which can’t be done during business hours.

THE VERDICT (so far)

Once I got past the bullshit and lack of functional pointers, the software is pretty self-explanatory and seems to work just fine.  Deploying it is fast and simple.  Unfortunately it requested a reboot on at least one server, probably more.

THE MICROSOFT EFFECT FOR HOME

It just turned out to be another one of those days.  If I had any hopes of the nonsense ending when I left work, they would have been dashed within moments of entering my house.  My wife hurled a box at me - fortunately it was a light box.  In it was our replacement box for the satellite dish.  The existing one had gone nuts so they sent us another one.   In spite of my inability to do anything right, all electronic tasks are my department.

In the box was the replacement hardware, a refurbished box which didn’t look very sturdy.  I told my wife we couldn’t use this one at all… it was silver and the original box is black.  She thought carefully for a moment.  Fortunately there were no more boxes nearby for her to throw at me.

I couldn’t help noticing the eerie similarity between Trend Micro and Dish Direct Network TV<tm>.  Neither came complete and the instructions were slim to none or completely irrelevant.  The box apparently requires a card to operate, kind of like certain cell phones.  I checked the documentation, which said absolutely nothing about whether to use the existing card or the new one.

My agitation level, nowhere near damped by a pleasant ride home, was back through my car’s roof (and I was in the house).

There I was, at home, with the exact problem I had experienced at work, in addition to a similar pounding in my right temple (not to mention the voices).  My wife, the one with no electronics knowledge who insisted I hook it up, warned me not to use the existing card, as it was probably messed up just like the existing box.   When I asked her how she knew this, she said she knows nothing about electronics.  Ok, I give up.  I should have known better than to ask that in the first place.

I fired up the new box with the new card and was promptly treated to a Setup Wizard.  I have to give them credit; it was well thought-out.  Unfortunately I didn’t know the answers to most of the questions they asked.  Fortunately the dish was aimed more or less correctly, or at least the wizard didn’t complain.

We brought up the guide and immediately noticed it thought the time was ten thirty.  This was somewhat off-putting, as I knew it had to be in the vicinity of five thirty and couldn’t figure out what time zone it thought it might be in.  Mind you, it asked me for my zip code, so it should have known what time zone it was in. (%*#ing handicapped electronics.

When the wife told it to go to a favorite channel, it brought up a menacing looking black box, which suggested we call Service.  Oh no…. not again!!!!!

It is at this point that I bring up an almost non-related technology that also fails us: voice-response telephone menus.  They’ve come a long way.  They’re pretty accurate with YES and NO but beyond that, it’s a struggle.  Another reason they don’t always work so well is that people get colds, like my wife.  When the cold is gone, so is her voice, or at least half of it.  She had to repeat her phone number into the blasted device seven times before it recognized it correctly.

Her experience with the person who eventually answered the phone was vaguely similar; she had to repeat herself a lot and very little got done for a long time.  I found myself nodding off and forgetting she was still waiting for them to actually do something, like activate the card in the bleeping box.

After Trend Dish TV finally got around to activating the system and we could watch tv again, my wife picked up the manual for the box.  Fifteen minutes later she tells me that it says you have to put the card in and go through the wizard for setup.

So fifteen minutes after the fact, the customer finally discovers the process.  Is there a disconnect here somewhere or have I been ranting purely for my own enjoyment?

All they (Trend, Direct Dish, anyone) had to do was put one tiny slip of paper in with the product that had a few simple steps to perform to make the product functional. LEARN SOMETHING FROM THIS, MANUFACTURERS.