Norton Anti-virus-Unable to Live Update (Virus Def) Error/Java 1.4.2

I also have Norton Utilities. What other virus detection software are there out there? Is Norton the best?

I bought into Norton/Symantec many years ago. I like the disk doctor and speed disk.

Is this the best there is?

I like the Norton anti-virus, but would avoid the rest of their utilities; on OS X, reports of lost data and other corruptions from Norton's attempted "repairs" and "optimizations" abound.

My recommendations:

for general Mac diagnosis (disk and otherwise): TechTool Pro 4
for directory diagnosis and reconstruction: DiskWarrior
for catastrophic disk data recovery: DataRescue II

"Speed disk" optimizations (compacting the storage areas of the disk) are not as necessary as they once were. And if there is significant data movement needed to create the contiguous files for optimizations, the risk of trouble is greater, and the speed MUCH slower that simply cloning the disk to another drive and then cloning it back. For that purpose I prefer SuperDuper which is simple and effective. (see below).

The need for datarecovery or even trying to fix a problem (software or hardware) on a hard drive can be nearly eliminated by use of a good and routine backup procedure. Firewire hard drives are cheap enough now that getting a couple of external 250GB or larger ones is well within reason. I use SuperDuper to do my backups; once a full backup is completed, the incremental I do nightly takes about 10 minutes and the Growl extension can send me email that it was completed or had a problem.

Why Superduper? It created BOOTABLE clones which can be fully restored to the source drive using DiskUtility or SuperDuper; individual files can be recovered by just copying then back! It is not as heavy duty industrial strength as Retrospect, but is is about 1000 times easier to use.

Ed

PS: I have no affiliation whatsoever with the products or companies mentioned above. I'm just a user, though one with 40 years experience with computers...

Hi AuCountry;

Since you are running OS X, you are leaving yourself open to having Norton corrupt your disks for you.

I was using Norton a couple of years ago and without even asking me it corrected what it thought were errors on my hard drives. I called Symantec for help and their response was to buy new disks because my olds were no good. Instead I came to this forum and discovered that the fault was most likely Norton. After much work I was able to fix my disks. I then proceeded to remove everything from Symantec off of my system including NAV. I trashed the manuals and CDs. It felt so good.

Allan

You may also want to check these out:

http://www.clamxav.com/

http://www.intego.com/virusbarrier/

Good luck

Klaus