Norton AV 2001 + popen + WinMe = crash

[Tim Peters]

[Kirby Urner]
> Wondered if others have this problem:  when I try any of the popens
> in the os module, and leave NAV 2001 enabled, I get various freeze,
> VxD or other errors necessitating hard boot.
>
> Disabling NAV 2001 ends the problem i.e. popen variants work as
> advertized (to the extent of my testing anyway).  Running Python 2.1.1.

I reported this to Symantec against an earlier version of NAV, and they gave
me a runaround stretching over a couple of months.  In the end they
suggested I purchase NAV 2001 to see whether it still happened(!).  I didn't
bother, and I'm appalled to hear that it's not fixed.

This has nothing to do with Python, BTW:  *any* program calling the
Microsoft popen() function displays the same symptoms.  I gave them a very
small (5-line) C program to illustrate that, but try as I might I couldn't
get beyond the first two layers of (polite but clueless) tech support to
someone who even knew what "a C program" was.

BTW, are you running Win98?  IIRC, only Win98 systems suffered this
problem -- but not *all* Win98 systems (for example, not mine; so why did I
spend months on this?  because of Guido's Win98 box <wink>).

the-virus-stops-here-ly y'rs  - tim