[Giorgius]

Users of Nortons Anti-Virus 2004 have been experiencing problems on Windows XP for nearly a month now, with the anti-virus software requiring reactivation after a computer is rebooted 25 times.

Symantec regional product manager Norman Kohlberger said the problem had been noticed with the international English and US English builds of NAV 2004.

In August this year, Symantec announced that it would be introducing activation for all its products, beginning with NAV 2004.
Activation has to be carried out within 14 days of installation, else the software is rendered unusable.

Kohlberger said the problem had been noticed both on XP Home and XP Professional. He said he was unaware whether it had surfaced on systems which had been updated with Service pack 1 or 1a.

Service pack 1a is the same as 1 apart from the fact that the Microsoft virtual machine is removed in 1a. Service pack 1 was issued in November last year. In the past there have been reports of third-party applications experiencing problems after application of service packs.

"The problem started slowly about a month ago but now we are seeing more and more reports of this reactivation," Kohlberger said. "We are trying to find out what causes the problem and we will release a fix as soon as we can. For the moment, users will need to contact our support centre if this happens."