Happy Birthday Macintosh!

25 today!

Nothing more to say!

(I'm a poet and didn't know it)

Macintosh 25 on 1/24/09

Hard to believe but the Mac has been with us for almost a quarter of a century. I didn't get my first Mac until a few years later (in 1992 I bought at IISi) but it was the first real computer that I owned (my first was a ZX81).

Well, if you bought one of the first Mac's you might want to share that story at http://mac25.org/.

How to Reset the Subscription for Norton Antivirus Version 11

So my boss bought a new Mac and it came with a free copy of Norton Antivirus (NAV). He doesn't like NAV so gave it to me. "Thanks" say I as my subscription is just about to run out.

Well, you can't just install a new copy over the old copy and get the license term to extend. No point trying to call Norton for help so I played around a little.

I tried uninstalling the old version and reinstalling the new version. That didn't work.

I tried uninstalling the old version, trashing everything I could find that the uninstaller missed and reinstalling the new version. That didn't work either.

At this point I realized that the old version and the new version were exactly the same. No big deal, it just meant that I didn't have to keep worrying about which version I was installing.

I tried uninstalling the old version, trashing everything I could find that the uninstaller missed, tried to find anything hidden and reinstalling the new version. Love the internet as a source of hints of what to look for here. That finally worked.

So here's a step-by-step on how to get your NAV Version 11 subscription extended:

1. Uninstall NAV 11 using the uninstaller
2. Restart Computer
3. Hunt down and manually delete the following:

• Library/Applications Support/Symantec
• Library/Applications Support/Norton Solutions Support
• User/Library/Preferences/com.symantec.WHATEVER. If you can't find any of these, don't worry, you just have a better uninstaller than the one I have.
  

4. Launch Show-Hide Files Automator to show hidden files
5. Delete the com.symantec folder in .private/var/db/
6. Launch Show-Hide Files Automator to re-hide previously hidden files
7. Restart (may be slow to restart)
8. Reinstall NAV 11
9. Enjoy

A lot of steps to legally extend the life of my NAV. This method will also extend the life of a subscription if you don't have a new legal copy.

And yes, I know; it's a mac, why use an AV? I just prefer to seeing as how I play in a multi-platform environment.