Windows security center

[Annika-Pannika]

HI, I'am new in this thing of posting so please tell me if I do anything wrong.
I have XP SP 2 and Norton running. I use Spybot every few days and since 2 or 3 days ago, every time I start up the computer Spybot tell me I have Windows security ....Antivirus disable notify and Firewall dfisable notify. First of all I have read previous posts so I have checked in the control panel/ Norton Security Center and everything is checked.
In Sandras answer She said that sometimes malware was the cause, in that case what shoul I do.
Sorry for being so long. Thanks for your help. Merci

[spybotsandra]

Hello,

Since the Detections Update from July 25, 2005, Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4 has been detecting Security Risks (renamed to "Windows Security Center" on July 30) associated with Microsoft Security Center Registry changes. This is neither a false positive nor a bug. It is just an information.
Spybot-S&D only wants to bring to your attention that "someone" disabled one or more notifications in the Windows Security Center, e.g. the notifications that your virus protection is not active or not up-to-date. If you changed the settings yourself you can safely tell Spybot-S&D to exclude those detections from further scans.
In order to do so please right-click each in turn, then click "exclude this detection from future scans". That way, should any other part of security center settings change, Spybot-S&D will still detect those.
The same is true if you have another security solution installed (like McAfee Security Center or Norton Internet Security). These programs do also disable the Windows Security Center in order to take care of things themselves.
The reason why the changes are flagged by Spybot-S&D is that there are also malware programs that disable the notifications so the user doesn't take note of his security tools not being effective.

Some more information is also available in our forum:
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=87

Best regards
Sandra
Team Spybot

[Annika-Pannika]

Quote : The reason why the changes are flagged by Spybot-S&D is that there are also malware programs that disable the notifications so the user doesn't take note of his security tools not being effective.

How do I know it isn't a malware program? It suddenly appeared again, and every time I re-boot, which I have to do a lot (but that is a another pb).

Last I had this pb, I re-installed Windows, the pb disappeared, only to reappear this week.

[md usa spybot fan]

Norton Internet Security as well as McAfee SecurityCenter (if you choose it as the default Security Center) do turn off alerts within Windows Security Center. Because of this, I guess you have to trust them to protect you against malware that also manipulates these alerts.

This Symantec article may help (it was written for enterprise customers):
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/enterprise/sp2/faq.html

Note: If you search Symantec for "security center" (with quotes) there are other articles that may also help.
http://www.symantec.com/search/

I personally use McAfee AntiVirus. The McAfee SecurityCenter was disabling Windows Security Center. I was able to deselect it as the default Security Center so that those alerts are no longer being disabled.

[Annika-Pannika]

Thanks for your help. I will read what you have advised me. And I will put more trust in Norton.
Do you have any explanation on why it suddenly appeared ? Norton has always been on my computer and has always been the security center. Something must have changed but what?