NAV/ Norton Antivirus Without Subscription!

Has your Norton Antivirus Subscription Expired? Do you need to download updates in an emergency?
I really hate it when I have to spend money. Get this free download (new as of 5/22/06)! There is a secret that Norton Antivirus/ Symantec Antivirus doesn't let you know. You can use Intelligent Updater's virus definitions without a subscription!

How? Believe it or not, it tells you how to do it WITHIN THE INTELLIGENT UPDATER!

Here it is: the Intelligent Updater is merely a packaged self extracting .RAR file. Use your favorite unRARing program to extract the files to a folder. Running the Intelligent Updater drops its information in a temp folder. Unzip the .zip file and follow the rest of the instructions. The tricky part: View, Details, to make sure you're looking at all the files in alphabetical order. Select ALL but the LAST file (zdone.dat) and copy them to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\VirusDefs\incoming. Then, copy the zdone file to the same place.

I'll be the first to admit that this isn't automatic. It's a relatively trivial matter for an average programmer to automate the download from Symantec's FTP site and batch the get, extract and copy. :)
Oh! You want me to do it for you?
Well, here's something or alternately here I worked up (706K). MD5 checksum file or here: e4760a7b507aa8952363daf506cced92, generated/you can verify with md5summer. Please note that MD5 stuff just means you have the file as released. It doesn't necessarily mean that it works or anything, though it should.
It's completely up to you whether you wish to use it, and if you do use it, you agree that you won't blame me for any viruses or screwy behaviour that you might get if you rely on this tool to do its job versus you paying for subscription. This zip includes unmodified binaries from Info-Zip and the One True Awk as well as complete source code for all that it does (the source code for the binaries can be obtained from their download sources). If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces. If you figure out some better way to do this, I'm interested to hear about it. I will provide absolutely no support on this, so don't ask. If I decide to update it, it's only because I want to. I can say “It works for me”, and I guess it might work for you. It gets the latest defs and installs them.

By special request, I'm presenting a script that you can use to download the Trend Micro Definitions. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to unzip the definitions to some place meaningful as I can't test it. You should, of course, copy and paste this into something like getdefstm.bat and place that file in the getdefs main folder. Note that wget, awk95, and an unzipping utility are already included in getdefs.zip.

Go back to my home page

updated 7/8/2008: added something for TrendMicro definition downloads.

updated 11/07/2007: removed a broken link.

updated 5/22/2006: The getdefs.zip now is completely non-interactive (No Window!) and doesn't rely on the stupid wait.awk kludge. It now has an unrar.exe that does the extract, and wget.exe for more advanced (read: passive/behind firewall) file transfer. This also means you can schedule it.

updated 11/12/2005 Just thought I'd put a link to another product -- Rapid Updater --that does things a little nicer, but is not (AFAICT) open source. It works on the Rapid Update releases, which may have a tendency to provide more false positives. I cannot verify that it will work without subscription.

updated 8/25/2005 getdefs.zip works a little better now. Also added MD5 checksum because all the most reputable buggy code has it! :)

updated 8/20/2005 to add the link to getdefs.zip

getdefs.zip is licensed under the CC-GNU GPL.

The file as a .zip package is licensed as above. Individual parts of the package are available from their original sources in potentially more liberal licenses than that of the package. If you don't like the GPL, or you are concerned about its application in this context, you are welcome to use the license of any of the bundled software in the package. Since the package is essentially a walk-through script, you are welcome and encouraged to replace the awk and unzip programs with those of your choice. awk and unzip programs are included as a convenience, and are intended to be considered "aggregate packaging", rather than a compiled part of the package.

There is no excuse for prolonged use of this program without a normal AV subscription. However, it may be a very easy way to install the latest virus definitions "immediately" if you are caught and need it in a hurry. It is also a potentially easy way to update valid subscriptions in a perhaps more automated manner.

Symantec, Symantec Antivirus, Norton, Norton Antivirus, NAV, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corp.