On Technology & The H-P Microsoft Closer Tie-Up

I skimmed through the Wall Street Journal piece this morning announcing H-P's closer ties with Microsoft. From what I gleaned, it's largely aimed at corporate cloud computing and similar product/markets.

Well, I'm here to tell you- after 4 hours wasted on a Microsoft-generated PC problem this morning- that the H-P-Microsoft relationship isn't the one to improve.

It's the Norton-Microsoft or McAfee-Microsoft interfaces.

If you are like me, your laptop periodically greets you in the morning with a sign-in screen and the notification that Microsoft's Windows operating system security updates thoughtfully invaded your machine during the night and rebooted it for you.

Hopefully, you think, the damn thing will still work.

Not this morning.

I won't go into exhaustive detail. Suffice to say, I spent a full hour on the phone with Comcast, rewired two laptops directly to the cable modem, and opened countless system management windows for the Comcast technicians in their quest to get my connection operating.

Only late in the process did I realize, as a backup laptop connected directly to the modem and the internet, but this machine did not, that there was a reason Norton Anti-Virus no longer appeared in the icon tray. Nor responded when I clicked on the icon.

The Windows security update had obviously corrupted the Norton program, causing it to simply die in place. But not become uninstalled.

Thus, every other internet access program was still waiting for the crippled Norton security program to allow it to connect. Which it couldn't do. Only when another machine was hardwired directly to the modem was it able to bypass the crippled security program's iron grip on my internet access.

Once I uninstalled Norton, everything worked.

Silly me. Why didn't it occur to me right away that Microsoft would so carelessly reach into my machine, disable my anti-virus and firewall while leaving it in place, then silently leave me to figure out the damage. And how to overcome it.

Instead, I wasted an hour with Comcast, 10 minutes with my computer technician, subsequent troubleshooting of my wireless router and time spent re-installing Norton.

I'm sure I'm not alone. The Comcast technician, who was both pleasant and very skilled, remarked that they have waves of this type of malfunction during periodic Windows security updates. And that Zone Alarm was notorious for causing these sorts of issues, too.

You would think, by now, that Microsoft would have figured this out. That, at least, its updates would alert you to the fact that it had corrupted your firewall and anti-viral software. Or, heaven forbid, actually detect that program first, then download updates designed not to corrupt your resident security program.

But that would require some actual sensitivity to customer needs and concerns. Something of which Microsoft has never shown itself capable.