Another Alert

[Trevlyn]

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?

[Trevlyn]

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?

[hawkbit]

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.

[Trevlyn]

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?

[hawkbit]

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.