We recently upgraded some of our games to 32 bit from 16 bit. And now we are receiving customer complaints that the games freeze unless they disable their Norton anti-virus. Does anyone know what could be causing this or what it a workaround for Norton anti-virus?

Like most Norton products, NAV is atrociously coded and the only sure fire workaround is to reinstall Windows. Failing that attempt to uninstall NAV and get Sophos instead.

Cas :)

I realize that getting rid of the Norton utility is the fix, but lots of people think they need to use Norton utilites to protect themselves. What I'm looking for is a way to write our programs that will not trigger Norton Anti-Virus to freeze our programs. Are there any commonly known things that a programmer should not do because it causes NAV to freeze the program? We did not have this problem when our programs were in 16 bit, just now since they are 32 bit. What are the common things that cause anti-virus software to lock up programs. I notice lots of software developers tell people to disable their anti-virus software for better performance, but people insist on using anti-virus software. How does a programmer work around anti-virus software? Are there any common things that programmers do or is telling people to disable their software the only solution?

Simply put, Norton is the only bit of software that misbehaves. McAfee doesn't, Sophos doesnt, etc. Very much like having broken drivers, the fix is to replace the faulty software with something that works.

One alternative workaround you can try which really isn't recommended is setting your game's task priority to high.

Cas :)

Originally posted by princec
Simply put, Norton is the only bit of software that misbehaves. McAfee doesn't, Sophos doesnt, etc. Very much like having broken drivers, the fix is to replace the faulty software with something that works.


This is true, but most people wouldn't trust an indie app over a 'big-name' application like symantec/norton anti-virus. So by telling them that NAV is the cause of the game not running right, they may just distrust you more. For the customers that complain, I would just send them the 16 bit version, until you can come up with a better fix.

-Bruno

Originally posted by BrewKnowC
This is true, but most people wouldn't trust an indie app over a 'big-name' application like symantec/norton anti-virus. So by telling them that NAV is the cause of the game not running right, they may just distrust you more. For the customers that complain, I would just send them the 16 bit version, until you can come up with a better fix.

-Bruno

Or Offer both a 16bit and 32bit versions. Have a little speel saying the 32bit version is better ect, however due to a known issue with Norton Anti-Virus a 16bit version has been offered for you to run or what not. The 16bit version could also be given to people who have slower machines.

Originally posted by princec
Simply put, Norton is the only bit of software that misbehaves. McAfee doesn't, Sophos doesnt, etc.
:rolleyes:
If only. I've never had a problem with Norton. McAfee has given me no end of pain. It's highly dependant upon how your system is configured, and different AV tools will give you different results.

With WindowsXP, there was a bad patch that was released by Microsoft earlier this year (March?) it caused most antivirus software to perform very badly. I don't know that it would have caused a total lockup, but it could slow things down enough to cause pauses when opening or saving files. Maybe this is what your user really means. There was another patch released by Microsoft to fix this a month or 2 later, so if your user has XP make sure they are up to date on their patches.