Date: Mon, 27 Oct 97 14:02:11 -0800
From: EvangeList <evangelist@apple.com>
Subject: Tidbit - Windows NT, Virus Scanners, and Macs

Keyword: Advocacy, Windows Daymares

Gardner, Jon L.

I manage a medium-sized network, primarily Windows NT-based, with a few 
precious Macintosh clients. About a week ago, I replaced one of our main 
NT 3.51 servers with a new box running NT Server 4.0. Never mind the 
all-nighter nightmare of the switchover itself...the interesting part 
came a few days later, when I connected to the new server from my trusty 
Macintosh IIci and tried to rename a file. The NT server "blue-screened," 
which is fancy Microsoft talk for "crashed like a big dog." I thought 
that it had to be a coincidence, and didn't think anything else of it 
until today, when I was able to blue-screen the server twice trying to 
rename a file. If it didn't cause my telephone, pager, and boss to all 
start making a lot of noise, I would have thought it pretty cool--a 
ten-year-old Mac killing a brand-new Windows NT server!

A $195 tech support call to Microsoft (need another ceiling fan, Bill?) 
let me know that I needed a patch for the Cheyenne InocuLAN NT 
virus-scanning software. A similar problem exists with McAfee Virus Scan 
for NT. Both products, when used alongside NT's Services for Macintosh, 
can easily kill the server. Much as Microsoft would like me to believe 
otherwise, I think this is a classic case of third-party developers 
having to patch their products to function on a buggy OS. I asked the 
Cheyenne technician about that and he said, "Well, I can't really talk 
about that. But we don't wait for Microsoft to post a patch. 
<sarcasm>It's never their fault</sarcasm>, so we just go ahead and fix it 
ourselves."

You want to know the worst aspect of the whole ordeal? It's just another 
normal day of Windows NT support...every day, I discover one more NT 
feature that fails to perform as advertised.

If you're having this problem with McAfee Virus Scan for NT check the 
Microsoft Knowledge Base (and be prepared to cough up $195): 
<http://premium.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q172/5/11.asp> If 
you're having this problem with InocuLAN, you should download InocuLAN 
Build 270 update (and be prepared to reboot your server): 
<ftp://ftp.cheyenne.com/pub/InocuLAN/il0145.zip>