Religion, Politics, Culture: Defined & Explained

eTrust Antivirus Release 8

Occasionally. I have to be the first kid on the block with the new techie toy. In that spirit, I purchased the new Computer Associates eTrust Antivirus program, Release 8. I wanted a program that was certified to work with my 64-bit version of Windows XP.

Prior to installing, I uninstalled the eTrust version 7 that I was using for the past three weeks.

The installation went ok. I was prompted to agree to three different licenses and had to fill out a full-page registration form before I even got to the screen to select the product that I wanted to install.

When selecting the program to install, there is a one-sentence summary of each product choice; there are five or six from which to choose. I selected eTrust Antivirus Release 8. The next screen lets you choose Client, Server or Custom installation. I made my choice and then presses finish to install.

Partway through the installation, I got an error that the license would not register so I was being given a 30-day trial version of the program. After installation finished, the system prompted for a reboot.

After rebooting my computer, I tried to find where the license could be entered again to get the product registered. I could not find any screen to enter the information. There is a license button on one of the screens but it doesn�t work like you would expect. It doesn�t ask you to enter a registration number or verify the information that you had previously typed in case you typed one instead of �I� or zero instead of �O� or something lame like that; instead, it asks you for a path to the license file. I even tried cutting and pasting the license key code from the order confirmation e-mail that they sent me but it would not work.

The license button gave you a screen that had three buttons. A fill-in box next to the Browse button seemed the logical place to find a license file. Once you click on Browse you are presented with a search window similar to Word or Excel when you select File-Open. The choices for file type are the default �*.*� (the dreaded search wildcard), .gif or .htm.

What and where this mysterious license file is remained a mystery for several hours. It seems like this interface is intended for a client installation to find the license file of the server installation. (See number Five below for more info.)

There is no Help option. I looked because often licensing is buried in the Help-About button on the program.

After several hours of frustration on the CA website and uninstalling and reinstalling the program four more times, this is what I discovered.

First, all of the user name, address and other neat mandatory fields that you are prompted for in the installation, are not memorized by the setup program and must be reentered each time you run setup.

Second, there is no help option available from the setup menu.

Third, there is no help available for Release 8 at the CA website.

Fourth, HP and Microsoft have much better Knowledge Bases than Computer Associates. I even went through the registration at their website, for the third time in a month to try to login to some support options. CA does not seem to have integrated login data so I had to register once to download a trial copy, which I could never get to install. Then I had to enter all the same info to buy the program on their store website, and third, I had to register to get a look at portions of the support website.

Fifth, I did find out that there is a registration file in the Shared Components directory that this is an .xml file but it only shows enough information to see that I have a thirty day trial version currently installed.

Sixth, the licensing scheme and file locations have been completely revised for Release 8 when compared to Release 7.

In light of all that had happened, I sent an e-mail to CA in hopes of getting some help to get the program licensed properly. I may have to hack the xml file but I would like to get the program working properly.

***
Six Hours After My Original Post

Amazingly, when I got home today there were two e-mails waiting for me in response to my request for help, the e-mails were due to the fact that I was not there to answer the phone call from Computer Associates. That�s service!

Anyway here is the text of the e-mail.

This is with regards to your Licensing Issue# XXXXXX91.

I understand that you have installed the product on a 64 bit machine.

Kindly note that the agent will work fine on a 64 bit machine, however, kindly install the (ITM server) Console on a different machine which does not have a 64 bit processor.

The licenses will get updated only when a console machine connects to CA site and get it refreshed. Otherwise, the license.xml file will be holding the trial info only.

Hence, you can install the Console on a different machine and have the 64 bit machine as an agent. Kindly let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,
Cheryl
CA
License Support Representative

As Paul Harvey says, �and now the rest of the story.�

I took my handy eTrust R8 disk to my wife�s 32-bit Windows XP computer and started the install process again. I agreed to three licenses and filled-out the same full page form again, selected eTrust R8 and then surprise! There were four menu choices instead of the three that were on my 64-bit computer.

32 Bit System Reveals Fourth Choice

As instructed, I installed the ITM Server.

This was a good first step but is not the end of the computing adventures that I experienced.

When I rebooted the computer and tried to go into the ITM Server, I was prompted for a Username and Password. I figure no sweat, I will enter what? My registration stuff asked me to create a password but not a username. What now?

Thankfully there was a help button on this screen. After mousing around I found out that the eTrust ITM Console uses the default Administrator account of the computer as the Username and Password. This was simple enough, I entered the username and there was no password on the Administrator account on my wife�s XP machine so I just hit Enter and . . . nothing. Program error, I must enter a password. But there is no password! The only choice I had was to go to Users in the Control Panel and enter a password for the Administrator account on the XP machine.

I then went back to the ITM Console and tried the Administrator account with my newly created password and like magic, I was able to login.

The console could see my computer had eTrust but there was nowhere that I could find to register the license which was the whole purpose of this exercise in the first place.

Based on my experiences the night before, I though why not just share the directory with the license in it and see what happens. I shared the SubscriptionLicense directory and then went to my 64-bit computer.

I opened the License Tab and browsed to the SubscriptionLicense directory on my wife�s computer and selected the License.xml file and my computer accepted the choice. Now I am running a fully licensed copy of ETrust Antivirus Release 8 for my 64-bit Windows XP system.

1. I just read your post on etrust v8 and I had to laugh.  I have been using etrust antivirus since it used to be called InoculateIT and was owned by a company called Cheyenne.  For the last year at least we have been on v7.1 and I received my upgrade to v8 as part of their software maintenance program. 
   So.. I installed it in my xp machine and ran in to the same “eval” problems you had.
   I also had a more interesting issue I thought I would add.
   After installing the software I went in to the “gui” front end on my machine and tried to update my virus pattern files to get the latest ones from CA.  There was no default, and unlike v7 which allows you do do FTP or UNC, v8 only does HTTP.  So, I tried to add a new source.. error.  It appeared as if there was a source there already but it had no name, so I tried to rename the “blank” source .... error.  After a half hour of 50 different errors I decided to start hacking.
   First I went to the inoc6.ncf file that was in the install directory on the cd and found references to the update site hosted by ca.  Its etrustdownloads.ca.com port 80.
   So, in to the registry.
   It used to be simple in v7. Under HKLM\Software\ComputerAssociates there was only a couple of places information like this could be stored,  However, under V8 there is now listings for all the Integrated Threat Management functions like info about PestPatrol which I don’t even have.
   Eventually I found something under
   HKLM\Software\ComputerAssociates\Shared
   \CAUpdate\ProductConfig\ITM\ServerConfig\Server0
   In here I found references to the default update port of 42511 that I had seen in the inoc6.ncf file in roughly the same section as the etrustdownloads.ca.com information.  So, I changed the registry entry for “ServerPort = 42511” to “=80” and restarted the etrust gui panel.  Perfect, it took the setting.  Now, to figure out how to get the name in there and get rid of the invalid blank record that is showing up. 
   One thing that seemed to be missing in this registry folder was any reference to the server name where the etrustdownloads.ca.com would actually be stored.  So, I added a registry key “ServerName” and set the value to the appropriate site.
   I restarted the etrust gui… nothing.
   I decided to look at some of the other settings in other registry folders… since there are references to pestpatrol.. maybe those settings are similar.  In there I found a reference to “Server”.  So, I went back and renamed the key from “ServerName” to “Server”.
   Success…  I can now update my antivirus pattern files.
   
   But here is the beautiful part.  I went to ca’s website for support and it stinks.  If you go to the etrust antivirus section it only goes up to v7.1.  If you go to the ITM section, its 100% blank.  Even the documenation link was broken and gave an error. 
   I had also tried to download the virus pattern files by going to the “virus pattern updates” section on their site.  Again, only v7. 
   Its almost like CA didnt make this product… maybe there is a website in india or something we are supposed to use.
   
   So, right now I have the demo license issue with a key for 250 licenses that I cant use unless I install an ADMIN server module.  Absurd.
   Thanks for your post, it saved me hours of dealing with CA to figure out how to add the correct license information.
   FYI, I tried to post this as a comment on your site, but for some reason many of the graphics werent loading and I was unable to post it.  Could be because I am running IE7 beta, but wanted to let you know.
   Have a good one.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  03/01  at  04:44 PM

2. Thank, very interestingly, only you today has found a site 3 hours were on him. It was read but it is necessary to work.  Once again thank It is my site Alexander

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/11  at  06:39 AM

3. Great review and very informative article. Thanks to share with us.
   http://www.sitelistcentral.com

   Posted by Site List Central  on  10/11  at  04:33 AM

4. I have used most anti virus products on the market for years and have found etrust to be superior for several reasons. First, etrust provides free signature updates for life - not many companies do that. Second, etrust is nearly transparent in its operation - the realtime monitor and updates happen behind the scenes withous user invention and are take up incredibly small amount of resources. If you didn’t know it was running you wouldn’t be able to tell by how your system peerforms. Third their software and licsense costs you same whether you put it in a desktop, leaptop, PDA or even e-mail server. THE BIGGEST PROBLEM with etrust antivirus is that that default configuration set in it are very poor. I called Technical support on three diffrent ocassions. Each time I found out modifications that I needed to make to the default configuration. Once I made those changes, I have a configuration that is virtually bullet-proof. eTrust, with the proper modifications, is THE BEST antivirus software I have ever used!!

   (Sorry for some spell mistakes)

   Posted by MBA Colleges  on  10/27  at  09:28 AM
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