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Does the message telling you that updates cannot be retrieved give you any specific information? For example, Error: "LU1803: LiveUpdate failed while getting your updates", or something similar. If so your installation broken in some way and needs repairing. The repair depends on what the message says. Go to www.symantec.com and in the search box near the top of the home page enter the error message Live Update throws up. This will probably show several results mentioning solutions for different Symantec versions of the program. Choose the one that matches your version and follow the instructions. This should fix Live Update.

If the message has no specific information similar to above then it is possible that your computer has been infected by something. Judging by the number of entries about repairing Live Update that there are on the Symantec website it's clear that it is prone to problems which is why I previously suggested it was probably OK to let luall.exe run after the Zone Alarm warning. Looks like I might have been wrong and the original problem caused by malware. The things that do target luall.exe have mostly been around for a while so there's a good chance of finding and eliminating them depending on how long its been since the last successful update. Try running a full scan of your computer manually and see what it comes up with.

Hello, am I your best customer - or just somewhat computer illiterate - or both?

Upon receiving your reply I told Zone Alarm to allow the Symantec Live Update luall.exe, but since then there have been no live updates.  However do have an exclamation mark on the Norton bar telling me that my Live Updates are not up to date.  I have tried to run them but only get so far and then a message  appears telling me that they cannot be retrieved.

Any suggestions?

luall.exe is a process belonging to the Symantec LiveUpdate utility which keeps your Symantec products up to date. As you have discovered it is needed if LiveUpdate is to work properly. It was probably modified by a previous update from Symantec and so Zone Alarm is flagging that fact. Unfortunately, yet again, this file is targetted by some viruses (see note at end of this message). I'm not aware of any recent virus or malware that target this file so I suspect as long as your Symantec has been kept up to date that all is well and you can OK it in Zone Alarm.

Note: luall.exe is a process which can also be overwritten and modified by some viruses for example the Sober.X virus. If you had this virus and you run your virus update, the modified luall.exe will re-install the virus even if it was removed prior. Just shows you how sneaky some viruses are.

Is this why Norton is telling me that I need to update the virus protection, but when I try to run Live Update it says is cannot acces the files?

This might be of interest to anyone who uses talktalk.  I have had a lot of problems connecting to the internet, and staying connected, after about 2pm.  Yesterday I rang and spoke to someone who said it was due to talktalk merging with aol.  A few weeks ago I received an email from talktalk about this saying when I logged on I would be prompted to renew my details with them.  This has not yet happened, but apparently all talktalk broadband customers are being given new account numbers and because I didn't have one the server was not recognising me.    Whilst on the phone my details were "updated" and I now have a new account number so that should solve the problem (I was told confidently!!).   
Well, that could be the case - but I won't hold my breath.  Just thought someone else might be having the same problem.

I have had another alert from Zone Alarm this time that Live Update Wizard is trying to access the internet.  App LUALL.EXE  Dest. O.O.O.O; HTTP  It also carries the message "This programme has changed since the last time it ran".  Shall I allow it?

SSAutoRN.exe is definitely part of the Symantec stuff and it checks things on the Internet periodically although Symantec do not say exactly what is does (probably for security reasons). I think it's safe to allow it do what it wants in the interests of the Symantec Security Suite continuing to function efficiently. The variable time for programs opening is a fact of life - Windows just gets pre-occupied doing "housekeeping" sometimes. Unfortunately it can also be a symptom of a virus or other rogue program. I think you are pretty safe in this case.

1.  I could be wrong but I think I was asked for access quite a long time ago, however if that was the case it stopped and there were no alerts until about two weeks ago.

2.  The full details on the Zone Alarm alert are:
     App SS AutoRN.exe
     Designation IP 62.24.131.18:DNS

3.  It would be difficult to say whether Internet Explorere is taking a longer time to load or shut down than it used to.  Sometimes it seems to take ages to open, and then other times it seems quicker; shutting down time seems to be fairly constant.

4.  Sometimes it takes what seems a long time to open programmes, but sometimes it is "instant".

I think it's just another bit of Symantec's Security Suite that needs to update itself via the Internet. Before you allow it though I'd like to check further and the answers to the following would help me.

• When you say you've denied it so far how long has it been asking for access? If it's only just started recently it is remotely possible that something has got into your computer and is pretending to be part of the Symantec program.
• Does everything else still run OK or have you noticed any programs running more slowly than normal?
• Does Internet Explorer take a long time to load or shutdown?
• Does Zone Alarm give you the name of the file - something.exe or something.dll? If so could you let me know the exact filename please?

Recently Zone Alarm has alerted me to Symantec Shared Component wishing to access the internet.  Is this part of the Symantec Anti-virus system, or is it an attempt to introduce a virus?  So far I have denied it.