Theresias
12th July 2009 20:34 UTC

Detecting Norton Products...
First some background, we're installing our application with NSIS but sadly there are other apps which may interfere with it. Our application is time critical as it connects to non-pc hardware using sort of a serial connection.

One of the most common problems is that our customers have certain anti-virus programs installed which mess up all the real time related stuff on their system. Specifically the Norton crap is one of the worst. ;)

The idea is to display a warning if we detect a Norton/Symantec installation to directly inform our customers about this problem since most of them never read the manual (where we have pointed this out as well)... :rolleyes:

My attempt would be to simply look for folders/files and/or registry entries. Probably somebody does have experience with this or may even have specific suggestions?! Thank you guys (and gals).

jpderuiter
12th July 2009 21:52 UTC

Hi,

first of all, Windows is not a real time operating system (as you obviously noticed) and should not be used as such.
You can detect one or more antivirus programs, but you will not be able to cover every program that may interfere with your hardware.
The best way would be to have all time critical processes intergrated on your hardware.

That said, I assume that it's no longer an option to do that.
You can detect the Antivirus program installed on the users PC with the WMI Inspector plugin: http://nsis.sourceforge.net/WmiInspector_plug-in

Theresias
12th July 2009 21:59 UTC

Thanks for your input.

The idea is not to check for each and every software, just for specific ones which means the WMI Inspector is not of any help here. For example we have very good experience with AVG and NOD32.

In general there is little problem with our stuff on Windows itself as we have put a lot of logic into external hardware which is part of the whole thing but every once a while 3rd party software can have influence as well and the mentioned Norton products are known to cause such issues. :)

jpderuiter
13th July 2009 18:09 UTC

Well, I don't know about Norton Products, but the install folder / registry entry may differ for each version, making detecting it that way not easy.
Symantec has manual uninstall instructions for each version, which might get you started.
See for example:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT...02081213583048

However, with the WMI inspector you can find what AV and or firewall (which I guess are the interfering programs) is installed.
Search for Norton or Symantec in the returned string and you know.