** Note to all NAV 2003 Users **

[Tyler]

As of 14:00 today, several PC's at work suddenly crawled to a halt when navigating about the desktop - including my home machine, I discovered. Basic functions like right clicking on folders and opening apps all took over 30 seconds - rendering any workflow impossible. Fortunately, not all the workstations were affected on the network so we didn't grind to a halt entirely. It had my tech guys tearing what little hair they have left out for most of the day though, running AV and trojan scans, going through registry keys and various system configurations - all to no avail.

A mere six hours after returning home and trying to fix my own workstation, I found the problem - my girlfriend also had the same problem at her work which tipped me off. It transpires that Norton Antivirus's latest update (7th Jan 2004) is the cause. So if your computer is exhibiting similar behaviour - the easiest solution is to simply uninstall it and check Symantec's site for a fix.

They'd better get their lawyers ready...

[Tyler]

From a Newsgroup posting on alt.os.windows2000:

Here's a work around for the Norton Anti Virus slow bug.

If you have Norton Antivirus and got the Jan 7 2004 ish update, you
are probably getting a long delay opening files, opening Norton
Antivirus configuration panels, openning office docs and even right
clicking.
If you disconnect your ethernet, it fixes it, but thats not a good
solution if you are networked and require it.
Symantec will probably have a fix later but for now, here's what we
found that works for now.

1. First, disconnect your ethernet, otherwise this process will be
verys slow.
2. Go to your Norton Antivirus, and disable the automatic Liveupdate
3. Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared
4. Rename the file called CommonClient.dat to something else like
CommonClient.dat.bad
5. Rename the file called CommonClient_old.dat to CommonClient.dat
6. Reconnect your ethernet.
7. Until theres a new fix for this, DON'T do client updates with NAV's
liveupdate!

8. Add these entries to your hosts file:

127.0.0.1 sitefinder-idn.verisign.com
127.0.0.1 crl.verisign.com

Now, you can right click files again, open NAV's control panel,
actually have your office files scanned, etc.

If you don't find the right CommonClient.dat file, try to find an
older version from another PC that did not get the latest update.

As a last resort, reinstall NAV, and don't do the client update.
Hope that helps, it worked for me and 5 other co-workers who had
automatic live updates enabled!

[Devildawg]

Shame!

Norman ownz ya! :D

[Joey]

perhaps not totally symantec's fault...

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/sharedtech.nsf/docid/2004010810205113

[Tsung]

Tyler, give yourself a cookie, I thought I was going mad..

Just recently my machine has had all the symptoms as above, I didnt really look into it, not only have you told me who the culprit is, you've given me the solution as well..

Thanks :D

[Zenith]

Same thing here. I was pulling my hair out on Wednesday night wondering why my machine was crawling and why NAV wanted to connect to Verisign.

Mucho thanks on identifying the problem and providing the work-around. :)