Symantec’s Tool Fixes XP SP3, Vista SP1 Registry Corruption

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

You’ll recall that Symantec admitted that the SymProtect feature of its security products was at least partially to blame for registry corruption which occurred during both Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1 upgrades. It promised a standalone utility to remove the corrupted entries, and it’s finally delivered on that promise.

SymProtect, if running when the SP installs were done, would prevent a utility called Fixccs.exe from being able to delete registry entries created during the installations, thus causing the corruption problems. At first Symantec blamed Microsoft, then admitted to the XP SP3 problems, and finally to the additional Vista SP1 problems.

The tool, which can be found on Symantec’s website, removes the erroneous entries from the registry.

SymProtect is advertised as technology designed to protect Symantec’s security software from being hacked by malware, and this is why Fixccs.exe was unable to delete the aforementioned registry entries. Because of that, you can see that it’s quite possible that other security products might have the same effect on Fixccs.exe.

Of course, Symantec’s position as the market leader among security products makes it far more vulnerable to this type of error.

My guess is Microsoft was testing the upgrades only on systems running Windows Live OneCare, its own security product.