Windows OneCare Problem

I got a call the other day from a customer who had just purchased Windows OneCare to protect a couple of his computers. When he installed it on his laptop, it installed ok but when the computer just rebooted, it just kept rebooting. When I arrived and wanted to get out of the reboot loop, I hit f8 while it was loading up and directed the computer into safe mode.

I figured the problem would likely be solved by removing OneCare. Unfortunately, the uninstaller notified me that we can't be in safe mode to remove OneCare. I suspected there was other security software on the computer and a quick look confirmed my suspicions. An expired version Norton Internet Security Suite was still installed on the computer. You can't remove that one in safe mode either.

So I rebooted and tried to grab the name of the offending file or driver. Once I caught it, I searched for and renamed that file so Windows could no longer crash itself when it loaded the driver. It happened to be ar5211.sys - a driver that works with the wireless card. Once I renamed that file to get it out of the way, I was able to remove both OneCare, Norton, and then proceed to rename the file back and install OneCare properly.

My main gripe with this process: During installation, security software should check to see if conflicting products are already installed. When a virus infects a computer, a common first task is to identify incumbant security software. I mean, if virus writers can do it, why don't security software vendors? It only makes sense that if they're selling a product to keep your computer running smoothly, they should not allow their product to be installed if it's going to BSOD or bring the computer to a crawl. Of all vendors, Microsoft should be able to accomplish this most easily since their operating system is the one in question. Does OneCare really have customer computer security as their true one care?/rant

I don't mean to just pick on Microsoft here. This is their first attempt at such a security product for the retail market. On the other hand there are some very established security software vendors that should do this but dont. Symantec, I'm looking at you! Thanks for reading and happy troubleshooting.