For those who did not give up trying to deploy Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.

On client computers you might notice that virus definition folder (by default it is located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\VirusDefs) takes up large amounts of disk space. In my case - more than 5 Gb. When you open VirusDefs folder you can see a lot of temporary folders called tmpXXXX.tmp, where XXXX are hexadecimal characters.

The cause of the problem is that virus definitions may be corrupted.

To solve this issue, follow the steps below:

1. Stop the Symantec Management Client service:

• Start -> Run
• Type "smc –stop" (without qoutes) and click OK

2. Stop the Symantec Endpoint protection Service in services snap-in

3. Go to "Virusdefs" folder. Delete all ".tmp" files and folders AND any numbered folders (such as "20070820.048", "20080115.021" etc.)

4. Install new definitions manually using the Intelligent Updater:

• Follow this link: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/defs.download.html
• Select the language and for the product, select Symantec Endpoint Protection
• Click "Download Updates" button
• Select the correct file to download for Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 depending on whether it is for 32-bit or 64-bit OS
• Click the ".exe" file specified for Symantec Endpoint Protection 11, download to your hard drive and run

This is the first guest article here at Bloody Computer! It was written by James Ricketts from Instant Registry Fixes. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful. K

Windows errors can occur at any time due to several reasons. Most of the time, these errors leave us helpless and may even cause us to lose important data and spend large amounts of money on expensive computer repairs.

We end up going through a lot of trouble, when in fact, there are some very simple steps that can easily help prevent these problems from happening in the first place. The top two causes of computer errors are malware and registry errors. Let’s take a look at some of the methods to deal with these problems and fix computer errors.

Keep Your Computer Malware Free

To keep your computer free of errors and other problems, it is essential for all PC users to have anti malware tools installed on their PCs. Primarily, there are three tools that are crucial for all PC users—Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, and Anti-spam.

Antivirus tools help you keep your PC free from malicious programs such as Virus, Trojans, worms, and backdoors. Antispyware

…

This little annoying tray icon may irritate you, if you are like me, you dont like things popping up for no good reason. Here is how you disable it, but read the description because by doing so you lose some functionality (that you may not care about though).

Download the free tool from the divx site here:

http://support.divx.com/cgi-bin/divx.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1630

Direct link > DivX Toolbar Toggle Tool

Description: This tool turns on and off the DivX Toolbar (DivXSM.exe), which appears by the system tray when you play a DivX file. Notes: If you turn the Toolbar off, you will not be able to control the advanced features of DivX Media files in third-party media players, and the DivX video decoder may run with default settings.

Screenshot:

StarForce protection drivers 4.00.013 [4] and higher run under Windows Vista 32/64-bit automatically

* 1602 A.D. (32-Bit)
* 1701 A.D. (32,64-Bit)
* 18 Wheels Of Steel: Across America (32-bit)
* 18 Wheels Of Steel: Pedal To The Metal (Windows XP [service Pack 2] Compatibility Mode, Run As ADMIN)
* 18 Wheela Of STeel: Haulin’ (Windows XP [service Pack 2] Compatibility Mode, Run As ADMIN)
* 3D Rij-Simulator
* 80 days (32-bit)
* Agatha Christie : And then there were none (32 bit)
* Agatha Christie : Murder on the orient express (32 bit)
* Aladdin in Nasira’s Wraak (Dutch)
* Aliens versus Predator 2
* Americas Army 2.8 (32-bit)
* Americas Army 2.7 (32-bit)
* Americas Army 2.6 (32-bit)
* Anno 1701
* Age of Empires and the Rise of Rome expansion
…

I received an email earlier this week from a reader (Brian):

The Hide/Show Menu main menu doesn’t seem to work with this utility. I can easily hide it via other means, but your utility doesn’t seem to do it. All other changes apply, but not that one.

He did quite a bit of research for us, and determined how our utility was writing to the registry. Thanks to Brian’s diagnostic help we have determined that IE 7 no longer looks to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE key for the changes described in my previous article on the subject.

Normally with preferences like this, a Microsoft application will search HKEY_CURRENT_USER, then check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. So if you want to make the setting system wide, you simply write to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. If you want it for just the current user then you write to HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

The more I think about it, we should have been writing the updates to HKEY_CURRENT_USER anyhow. This allows you to customize the setting for each individual user on the system without impacting others.

We have updated it to write to…

A