When I migrated the work PC back to XP, I installed the eTrust antivirus software that $work has a license for.  Everything seemed fine, until my co-worker mentioned that I’d installed the wrong version.  ‘Oh,’ says I, ‘I’ll sort that out now then.’  Quick install from the central deployment server, and all was well, or so I thought.

Enter stage left our hero, ‘Windows needs to reboot’.  Fine, fine, reboot if you must.

A few hours later, I needed to VNC to one of the servers.  This would be easy, if my VNC icon was still pointing to the VNC application.  Instead it had been replaced by the Windows default ‘I have no clue where it went boss!’ icon.  ‘Peculiar.’ I remarked to myself.  Went into my downloads location, re-ran the installer.  Got one step in, and it complained that it couldn’t find the source files for the install.  Then I noticed that my installer had vanished from disk as well.  Beyond peculiar.

So, lets test.  Download the installer again.  Run it.  It vanishes from the Desktop within a few seconds of being run.  I check the local eTrust console in case it’s thinking ‘Virus!’, which is isn’t.  I try it again, same effect.  I try a third time, this time with a movie capture running (just in case I was seeing things).  Still does it.  Gave up, found a different VNC application and used that for the rest of the day.

This Monday, I poked and prodded it some more, and found the management console for eTrust after reading that PestPatrol (part of eTrust) doesn’t like VNC very much.  After much fiddling, I found the PestPatrol exclusions – there was even a local policy called ‘VNC’.  Sounds perfect.  Click.  Add exclusion.  Search.  UltraVNC.  Add UltraVNC 1.0.2. Save.  Weird, not listed.  Repeat several times (proof of insanity anyone?).  Still not listed.  Shrug, add path exclusion, hit save.  Done.

Re-install UltraVNC.  Installer stays around.  Run UltraVNC client.  Stays around.

I hate platforms that silently remove software, and even worse, don’t log that software was removed.  Oh well.