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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Experienced Review
I have read all the customer reviews on this product and as a veteran IT Engineer see that they all have one thing in common that seems to cause all the problems. The "Personal Firewall"
I have run CA's consumer and commercial products for nearly 10 years now and for the most part they do a fine job with a small caveat.
First of all if you have a...
Published on April 29, 2007 by Steve Harris
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
Do NOT Buy This Software! Junk Junk Junk!
I had been using the PREVIOUS version of Computer Associates EZ-Trust Anti-Virus for 2 years - and it worked like a charm! Never any issues, or slow performance on my PC or surfing the web.
Based on such a positive experience, I purchased the new 2007 suite, multi-user version with the plan of installing it not only on my desktop, but also on my laptop which...
Published on January 17, 2007 by C. Clay
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Experienced Review, April 29, 2007
I have read all the customer reviews on this product and as a veteran IT Engineer see that they all have one thing in common that seems to cause all the problems. The "Personal Firewall"
I have run CA's consumer and commercial products for nearly 10 years now and for the most part they do a fine job with a small caveat.
First of all if you have a hardware router such as a LinkSys or D-Link you really don't need a software "Personal Firewall". Simply install this product without this feature or disable it after the installtion finishes. Most average computer users will find that software based "Personal Firewalls" are an incredible nuisance, not to mention to technical to understand. These software "Personal Firewalls" are universally bad....ie Norton,McAfee,Trend Micro,etc... are just as annoying and troublesome for the average computer user.
The key here is to adjust your behavior when on the internet not the software. Installing cumbersome, memory intensive,overly technical software will only slow,crash, or cause irritating problems to your PC albeit all resolveable if you are a computer geek and fully understand all of this(Most people are not).
My point is don't buy an Internet Security Suite (All in one product)no matter who makes it, but if you must due to the great deal they are offering,simply don't install the "Personal Firewall" or just disable it after the installation completes.
CA makes great AV and Anti-Spyware products so just enjoy the benefits that they provide and forget about the other stuff.
For all you that had worst case problems consider this:
Your prior security software may have still been on your PC(Yes even after you uninstalled it)and causing problems with the new install(very common with prior owners of Norton)also your PC may have had other issues to begin with, such as spyware,driver issues,hardware problems,etc...
Did you know that Windows needs to be wiped out and reloaded on your PC every 2 to 3 years to run smoothly ??????? I can almost gurantee that if you wiped and reloaded your PC that the CA software would work fine. I know...what a pain. The upside to wiping and reloading Windows is that your PC will run as fast and dependable as the day you bought it.
The problem is that absolutely no software that was ever created guarantees that it will be 100% compatible and trouble free with any combination of other software that you might have installed on your system. The number of possibilities here are infinite as you can imagine. So to conclude:
Keep in mind it is human nature to say something negative before saying something positive.
PS. CA is hands down better than Norton or McAfee consumer products.
This comes from 10 years in the trenches.
Some other good security products to try are Trend Micro and NOD32.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
Do NOT Buy This Software! Junk Junk Junk!, January 17, 2007
I had been using the PREVIOUS version of Computer Associates EZ-Trust Anti-Virus for 2 years - and it worked like a charm! Never any issues, or slow performance on my PC or surfing the web.
Based on such a positive experience, I purchased the new 2007 suite, multi-user version with the plan of installing it not only on my desktop, but also on my laptop which runs a FREE version from Avast! (which is Excellent). I consider myself to be a somewhat advanced computer user, so I am aware of the typical safeguards one uses when installing any software.
I installed the software - and it had TECHNICAL ERRORS before it even finished installing itself! If a major computer firm can't get bugs out of the installation portion, what chance does the rest of the software have?
Problems Since Installation:
Parser Errors - every day, every time you turn on the computer, everytime the software attempts to do something.
Slow to shut down, and slow to start up the PC
I had to turn OFF the Firewall that comes with the suite; it won't let you do anything (so it seems) and the user interface is poor. When you install the product, it AUTOMATICALLY disables the Windows Firewall and installs it's own. So after disabling the firewall, I had to go back and turn on the Windows Firewall.
I went to the company web site for tech support on the Parser Errors (which specify lines in the Computer Associates software program), and there is NOTHING with the word parser in the support forum. Of course I searched the web, and a Parser Error deals with Registry --- and I digress. NO ONE after installing software they PAID for should have to start troubleshooting problems CREATED by the software itself - let alone software you purchase to protect your PC.
I then contacted Tech Support via the web site - and 3 days later I don't even have a reply.
In the meantime, I will try a program like Spybot to fix the registry; but eventually, I expect to uninstall the product, and once again, find another. At this point, that will be Avast!
FEBRUARY 2007 UPDATE:
Things were getting so bad (memory errors running other programs that once worked flawlessly now failed on a regular basis), so I uninstalled the entire product. The memory issues still occurred even after uninstalling and reinstalling the good software programs. Finally I did what I hate doing: using Windows XP Restore, I restored my entire computer to a date BEFORE I ever installed the CA suite. SUCCESS. With the computer now in early January, all my programs ran as they did before, without crashing, without errors, and at normal speed. I will give Kudos to CA for 1 thing: after uninstalling, it brings up a comment form, which I filled out and sent to CA. They immediately replied, and even sent me a link to a file with a registration code to ONLY install the Anti-Virus portion of their software, which always worked fine. I did that, and everything is still normal. Hence, the spyware and firewall part of this software are flawed.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Worst Software Experience Ever!!!!, January 28, 2007
This was the worst software experience I've ever had. I had many of the same issues listed in the other reviews - including the windows installer going nuts and my computer rebooting itself every 2 minutes. I contacted support by web (They charge for phone support) on a different computer. Support gave me some things to try - when I did try them they did not work. I finally was able to disable the software - but it would not even let me uninstall it or delete it in windows explorer.
I was able to get online with it after I disabled it, but support was worse than before. I spent more than 1 hour online with a person who was obviously running a number of support windows at the same time (5-10 minute delays in responses to questions). The support person couldn't even spell or put together full sentences - and was very rude. At one point she gave me a link to download a "fix". When I asked what the difference between the fix and my software was she replied, "nothing".
After that she was nasty (I still have my copy of the weblog that I'm sending to CA) and then cut off the support window without warning.
I finally had to restore my computer to a prior day and redo everything I had done in the meantime.
In short - this is not only the worst software I've ever had - but the support is even worse. I will never - NEVER - deal with this company again!!
Beware!!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Fair but Problematic, March 13, 2007
This suite is nice as it has 3 users and does offer the full range of functions from spam to firewall. However, the installation on 1 out of 3 computers I tried was difficult. Actually having to change a registry setting for this one.
The firewall tends to cause sporadic problems with allowance to sites and even my printer. Many are difficult to track.
The program also seems to slow up my computers more then other security programs I've tried.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
So far so good..., August 26, 2007
I was very hesitant to install this suite on one of my computers. It was previously running "Freedom" from Adelphia and since Time-Warner bought them out and Comcast aswell, they switched A/V suites (they are free to TW Cable subscribers). While Freedom wasn't the best, it worked and had some nice extras. A month or so ago Freedom stopped updating, and said the license was expired. I did not want to install CA Internet Security Suite because of all the negative reviewes I've read here and on other sites. Well recently I decided for the heck of it to install it on said machine. Installed all portions of the application and it is working fine. I had to call a TW tech to get the link to install this and I mentioned all the bad reviews I had read, the tech told me there is a whole new version up mainly because the older one would not work correctly with Vista and they were getting complaints, which was sent off to the company. So I figured what the heck, removed Freedom and installed this. It's been running for over a day now with zero problems. It doesn't slow down my machine, I did monitor the previously mentioned file "ITMRTSVC.exe" from the Task Manager. And while I have some other programs running in the background, this file is not eatting any resources up. Upon installation it does disable the Windows Firewall and states it will turn it back on upon uninstall. I've played several online games with it running and I see no slow downs. Hitting the About tab states it is Product Version 3.2.1.14, CA Anti-Virus 8.4.0.24, CA Anti-Spyware 9.1.0.18, CA Personal Firewall 9.1.0.33 & CA Anti-Spam 5.1.17.0. I am running this on WinXP Home all updated. I ran a scan of an 80GB IDE, a 160GB IDE and 2x 120GBs SATA in RAID 0 array hard drives and it went very quickly. So far it works better then I expected. Lots of people have said not to use it's firewall, but I installed it and it has not given me any problems. So 4 stars as it could have some more features but overall it seems okay.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Avoid CA like the plague, July 7, 2007
If I could give 0 stars, I would. This piece of software was nothing but trouble.
I had been using McAfee Security products since 1996 and was happy until their most recent "upgrade" in 2007. Feeling that it slowed my system down and that their customer service was slow and sometimes not very bright, I was open to trying something new. So, when I heard that CA was used by 98% of the fortune 500 companies, I thought, let's give it a try.
Well, while running McAfee it took 38 seconds for my system to boot up. I have 1.5 Gigabytes of RAM and a 3 Gigahz processor. With CA Security installed on my computer, it took over 3 minutes to boot up!
I had trouble installing CA and also had to disable the firewall in order to complete the installation.
When I got it all installed, I ran a scan and found a few files that have been on my computer for a LONG time that McAfee had never identified. I deleted them. I began to have system instability. I never should have deleted those files. I guess they were not spyware after all.
I contacted CA customer support and it was worse than McAfee's support. By comparison, I now consider McAfee's support team to be the GOD's of the support world.
I was so frustrated with all the problems I was having with CA and since I had installed it to speed up my system and it actually slowed it down, I decided to uninstall it, use the restore point to go back to a time before CA, and reinstall McAfee.
Now, my system RUNS fine, but I can't get it to shut down properly. I have to use CTRL-ALT-DEL EVERY time I want to shut down my computer and shut down components one by one.
I dread that the only option left to me at this point is to reset my computer back to like it was when it was brand new.
Even though McAfee is slower now than it used to be and it is harder to use than it used to be, I would still recommend it over CA. And as far as Norton goes... I used that years ago when I was a brand new computer user in 1995, didn't like it and have never looked back. A lot of people I work with use Norton and like it, so if you are shopping around, you might want to look at Norton too. For me, I am just going to stay with McAfee.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Stay far far away. This is JUNK., June 7, 2007
I should have listened to the reviews here about how it will not install or uninstall. This is the worst software I have ever installed. I finally got it uninstalled after two days. I recommend you run away now. I'd give it -1 star if I could. Glad Amazon refunded me my money.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
conflicts with other software, March 19, 2007
I purchased this software to replace Windows live one-care which is due to expire. Conflicts with too many programs, therefor i,ll renew my One care program which is trouble free.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Does it really work?, July 5, 2007
I installed this product by the instructions..within a day or two, it was causing my system to crash and reboot each time I tried to access any web site...I finally uninstalled it and went back to Nortons
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
CA Internet Security suite 2007, June 17, 2007
CA internet Security suite 2007 Software is a bad product. I purchased it from Best Buy and as soon as I installed it on my Sony Laptop- the computer froze. I restarted it in safe mode and send email to CA tech service. CA sent me an elaborate and time consuming procedure to re-install the software. I followed the instructions and my Lexmark printer stopped working. Then the Sony Laptop froze permanently as well. I lost all my data files. CA security software is a virus itself that damaged my equipment and it sucks. Also on the package advertisement "you are covered upto $6500 total internet protection" is a false promise. CA would not even talk about it instead they offered more help to install same software on my newly purchased Toshiba Laptop computer. CA is nuts.
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