OneCare was released earlier this week and I received notice that the beta I was on was due to finish and that I could purchase a discounted subscription. The funny thing is that the product is just not ready for release. I have an ongoing case with Microsoft support since October 2006 and we are still no further forward – After the software was re-installed (after it corrupted itself for the second time it asked me to reboot. I did so and then received a prompt to hit “continue installation” after logging into the computer. When I click this button I get the following error message – “Onecare cannot complete the installation at this time because of a problem connecting to the service. Please check your Internet connection, wait awhile, and then try again. If the problem persists, contact support.” This continues to happen. Clicking on contact support takes me to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=40212 which returns a 404 page not found message – not very helpful either.
So far we’ve reinstalled various bits of Microsoft software and OneCare about 20 times and each time the software says that it can’t contact Microsoft’s servers to finish the installation. This is despite the fact that tcpview shows a connection and the av software does download patches. The problem is compounded by the fact that the software’s debugging facilities are practically non-existent and do not provide any help to the poor support guy. Speaking of which he has some very strange support times, answering helpdesk calls emails on Christmas day.