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only workable solution
Hack:
just so everyone knows what we ended up doing. Microsoft was not very helpful and Symantec would not return our phone calls. As far as technical support goes, I can't say that either one deserves better than a flunking grade. Although, Microsoft was a little better at getting back to me. Enough of that, what you want to know is how to solve the problem. There are several solutions that will work, but not many are good solutions for our particular situation.
1. on the exitwindows_ex call use EWX_SHUTDOWN parameter only, this willl work most of the time, however if windows is locked up or your program or another program like microsoft word asks you to save information, the computer will not shut down until the user answers all questions in order to close all other applications running. Not a good solution for us.
2. Disable Auto-Protect on Norton Antivirus. You must reboot with Auto-Protect disabled before the exitwindows_ex code will work properly. However, you can not automatically scan a floppy disk or a file downloaded from the Internet for virus without manually running the virus scanner program. Not a good solution for us since our users mostly have extremely limited computer skills.
3. Buy another Virus Scanner program. We bought PC-Cillin by TrendMicro and it works with no problem with the exact same code. I still like Norton Antivirus program, but when I could not get through to their phone technical support for 4 days straight and e-mailing technical support takes 1 1/2 - 3 business days to get a response. I would suggest that the best solution is to avoid having to use their technical support if possible. Microsoft technical support had a little better response time, but would avoid answering questions and try to say it is a problem with Norton and refer me to knowledge base articles that they had me go through a few days earlier.
If you like more detailed information, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Gary Curry
