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[jack wallstreet]

This is a new one on me.  I have downloaded 32.0.20 both 64 and 32 and 32.0.16 (64).  Running latest Win 11.  Norton says they are fine, no issues (on download).  Windows Defender have been turned off by Norton (if seems, so normal exclusions not available).  When I try to run these exe files, (all 3 versions) nothing happens.  No activity shows up on the task manager, no warnings.  Norton activity report shows no activity of a file being blocked etc.  Even though Norton says everything is fine, I have turned it off and of course no change.  Obviously, I could uninstall norton, but Norton explicitly has said it sees no problem with the files, so I didn't go through the hassle of uninstalling.   Assumign this is a false virus (although no indication of this) and just waiting for next version will likely solve the problem.  Anyone have other thoughts.?

[JimH]

Uninstall Norton.  Update Windows Defender and configure it.

[jack wallstreet]

32.0.20 installed today.  With Norton and no special configuration.  FYI.   As you implied, time must tend to fix things with anti-virus

[EnglishTiger]

Norton finding a problem with those earlier versions but Not Reporting it reveals just how unreliable it is.

You will be far better/safer by following Jim's Advice and only using Norton to protect the Trash Can.

[JimH]

You will be far better/safer by following Jim's Advice and only using Norton to protect the Trash Can.

Haha

[jack wallstreet]

While I appreciate the recommendation to not use Norton and I also personally despise Norton's constant sell pop-ups and other things about it, it still has the highest rated protection factor and I find it worthwhile to use despite all the things to hate about it.    Here is what I had to do to install 32.0.25 (for those this may help).

1. Norton moved the install file to holding as it contained a virus (in its opinion).  Follow Norton's (somewhat obscure) prompts to restore the file.
2. Go to Norton settings, anti-virus and turn off the data protector for 15 minutes.  It is possible that step 1 will be avoided by turning off norton anti-virus and the protector in advance of downloading.)
3. Go ahead and run the MC install.

[Awesome Donkey]

In my opinion there's very little reason to use paid antivirus/antimalware software these days. While it was true that years ago, Windows Defender was a joke and the use of third-party antivirus was warranted, to their credit Microsoft did invest a lot of time and money improving Defender and adding all kinds of nice security features into Windows 10 and Windows 11 (some are not enabled by default, but are actually quite nice to use). With that, Windows Defender caught up and in some cases surpasses a lot of paid AV suites when you read the third-party AV test data, and it's free! The days of needing to pay for antivirus/antimalware protection are long over and have been since at least Windows 10's release. And honestly I would recommend to people with actually AV subscriptions to use their AV of choice until the subscription runs out and then get rid of the AV and give Windows Defender a go. Who knows, it may save you some money, and who doesn't like doing that?

I've seen instances where antivirus suites actually decrease security, for example a couple years ago when TLS 1.3 first came out some AV apps with Web (or HTTPS) protection didn't support it for a good while as a lot of popular sites were adding support for it and would force those websites to fallback to TLS 1.2, TLS 1.1 or worst of all TLS 1.0. They also tend to install their own root certificate and use that in web browsers to monitor traffic (which is known as man-in-the-middle) which even though it can be potentially helpful is for all intents a security issue. HTTP/2 is a thing now and I'm not sure which AV suites have been updated to support that.

And no, Windows Defender not any other antivirus/antimalware app is perfect. All of them will either miss things or cause false positive detections at one point or another (or many times, I'm looking at you AVG). First and foremost, the best protection is common sense; not opening links in emails that aren't from verified trusted sources (and even then it's good to be cautious), don't visit shady sites, never post information publicly on social media that could potentially be used in a social engineering attack. If you're technically savvy, using features like Windows Sandbox or virtual machines via Hyper-V or apps like VMware/VirtualBox to do all your web surfing in can also add an additional layer of protection... and yes, it adds more attack vectors too. Can't really win, huh?

[jack wallstreet]

Jim has a routine statement telling us to let your anti-virus provider know of a problem when trying to use MC.  I did that with Norton.  Norton replied a day later and said they had changed the status to safe.  We'll see if that holds.