Norton Internet Security antivirus update 'borked Internet Explorer'

[Dima007]

Users of the world's second best* browser were forced to use alternatives after an overnight update to Norton AntiVirus prevented Internet Explorer from working at all.

Aggrieved users who'd thought far enough ahead to install Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or any of the other alternatives took to Norton's official forum to vent their spleens.


"Sometime this evening, IE11 started crashing. In fact, it crashed an already-open browsing session, and now trying to start it up just instantly causes a 'Internet Explorer Has Stopped Working' error," wrote support forum contributor Sunfox, sparking an 11-page thread.

Forumites shortly figured out that an update to Norton Internet Security 360 had broken something critical relating to IE, with monkeynuts posting:

I have uninstalled NIS and IE started working. Then reinstalled NIS, and once the patch was deployed IE started crashing again.
Tales of woe, heartbreak and downloads of new browsers spread, until about 0400 GMT, at which point a member of Symantec staff posted: "Kindly run manual live update (right click on Norton icon on tray notification area > 'Run live update ')," helpfully adding "Kindly stop using work-arounds."

At which point all seemed to be well, judging by the forum posts from then on. Various Reg readers whose machines had auto-updated overnight then wrote to us to let us know what had happened.

El Reg has contacted Symantic, owners of the Norton brand, for comment and will update this story if we hear back from them.

Users still affected by the snafu are advised to re-run Norton LiveUpdate. ®

Bootnote
Google Chrome overtook IE as the world's biggest browser by market share in summer 2014. The more you know.

** A previous headline on this story mis-identified the affected product as Norton 360.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/21/norton_antivirus_update_kills_internet_explorer/

 

[marzametal]

Google, just another Akamai. Both can sod off.

 

[frogboy]

IE11 still works for me and i use Norton 360.

 

[Azure]

IE11 still works for me and i use Norton 360.

They probably released an update to fix the problem.

Bad for those that only use IE
They probably spent countless times trying to figure out what was happening.
It makes me wonder though do any of the Norton workers use IE, this kind of things should have been remedied during testing the update.

 

[frogboy]

They probably released an update to fix the problem.

Bad for those that only use IE
They probably spent countless times trying to figure out what was happening.
It makes me wonder though do any of the Norton workers use IE, this kind of things should have been remedied during testing the update.

Did not worry me i only use SlimJet or Cyberfox anyway but i just thought i would check it out in IE11.

 

[vindiesel]

I 5 days ago that I use Norton 360 State using IE for 20 minutes and I don't have any problem, everything works fine.

 

[kiric96]

They probably released an update to fix the problem.

Bad for those that only use IE
They probably spent countless times trying to figure out what was happening.
It makes me wonder though do any of the Norton workers use IE, this kind of things should have been remedied during testing the update.

all major companies are forced to use IE due to the fact that most of the company policies doesnt allow to install anything... neither use google due they survillance procedures...

 

[jan13]

Thank you, now I know where these problems with IE11.