Use GPO to deploy Norton V9 to clients

[JackDalton2001]

Hello,

Having read a number of the forum posts and surfed the net for hours I am no further forward in my quest to deploy Norton AV...

The situation is this. I am running a Windows 2003 / XP network and have Norton Corporate Edition loaded on my server and am now trying to deploy to the XP clients using group policy. I have achieved a default load using the "Symantec Antivirus.msi" file on the CD. However as is always the case I need to customize the install by disabling some of the features (POP for example) and also setting the parent server "SERVER1"

so that the client will join the server group.

I am ready to give up and spend the next three weeks loading this manually onto all clients... hopefully getting done before I am sacked ;-)

HELP !!!

Many thanks

Jack

[RogueSpear]

Unfortunately Symantec's documentation is just one step above useless. Look on your CD in \Tools\Nosuprt\ConfigEd and run the executable in there. Config everything the way that you want it, the interface is pretty self explanatory, then save your settings as GRC.DAT. Take that file and drop it into the root of your distribution directory. That is where the .msi file is located that group policy is calling the install from.

[JackDalton2001]

Many thanks for the advice, yes Nortons intructions are a total waste of time.

I will try this first thing monday and hopefully astound my boss, once again thanks

[RogueSpear]

I forgot to mention. When the app is installed, the msi file looks for a file called grc.dat in the same directory as itself. If it finds one it will be used, if not then it goes to default (or to any msi switches that might be defined).

[JackDalton2001]

Many thanks for your advise, it worked exactly as required.

Amazing how easy it is when you know how...

Jack

[RogueSpear]

Just imagine how nice it would be if Symantec actually documented the proper procedures in the documentation on the CD. I spent about the last three years on and off trying to get the firewall half of the Symantec Client Security product to work properly. All I accomplished there was pointing out about 4 bugs that Symantec later confirmed, only one of them was ever fixed as far as I know. I finally gave up. They're now losing around $5,000 a year in subscription revenue just from me alone.

I still swear by their AntiVirus product, but I make it a point to steer clear of anything else they make.

[InTheWayBoy]

Well, their documentation isn't that bad...but it is hard to find. Here's some docs that helped me out:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-s...niver=sav_ce_10

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_...als/savinst.pdf

The second is to the install PDF that should be with your install source. If not you can download it there. The section I found most useful was the last, the MSI switch database. The GRC.DAT is an easy way to go, but you also have other options.

And RougeSpear, so I'm not the only one who hates the Symantec Firewall...may I ask what you switched to?

[ravashaak]

Being someone who has dealt with configuration and deployment issues for Symantec products for a few years now, I can attest to their shockingly poor documentation. Even when you can locate the docs you need, they are usually poorly organized (if not dyslexically organized), ambiguously worded, and often times lacking even basic information someone would need to configure and administer the product. On a quality scale of 1-10 (10 being best) I'd at most grant them a 2.

- Ravashaak