In case you were wondering, I’m not immune to tech troubles. This week, I needed to resize a partition on a test machine. Initially, I used a program called PartitionMagic. It worked fine and I fully expected it to work this time around except it didn’t. Regardless of my actions, I kept getting a bad update sequence error. Although this error is annoying, it pales to the frustration of dealing with Symantec support options. Don’t ask me if I have confidence in their connected world.

The good news about this error was I had a number. Error 1527 to be precise. I’ve found that having an error number helps in finding a resolution. I figured this would be an easy resolution since Symantec has a search feature on their site. The results showed several solutions but neither fixed my problem.

Update: If by chance you get error 1527 in PartitionMagic, I'll recommend another solution - Acronis® Disk Disk Director Suite 10.0. I can't speak for all cases where the error appears, but I can tell you the Acronis program allowed me to repartition my hard drive. It costs $49.99.

The site also provided a page to rate the solution. I do answer these questionnaires as I figure the feedback is used to refine the answers for future visitors. You can see an example of one of these questions below.

The problem was once I hit the Submit button, I would get a cryptic error that probably only means something to four people in the world. I’m not one of them. Google doesn’t even have this error indexed.

I decided to see if I could reproduce this error on other help pages. Sure enough, I could. While Symantec does offer a nice page on how to use CHKDSK for those people who grew up in a GUI world, the error was the same. I could also reproduce the error on the test machine so I doubt this error is specific to my PC or the help documents I viewed. The setNavState error did not appear if I used Internet Explorer 7.0.

Because their suggested solutions didn’t work, I decided to look at the other Symantec support choices. I’m not a big fan of chat, but I didn’t feel like waiting 30 minutes or two days for the other options. After all, Symantec stated this was the “fastest and easiest way to resolve your issue”.

Actually, a faster way might be to first inform the user that chat only works with IE 5.5 and above and requires a 3.4mb software download. I was using Firefox 2.0.

I’ve opened IE, downloaded the software and told my browser the chat software is OK to run. I’ve also provided Symantec with my name, phone number, country, email address and problem description. I’ve also read and agreed to the EULA. Personally, I think this is too much but I would like to get my problem resolved.

And what do you suppose I get when I hit START CHAT? Yet another error!

While I’m sure the suggested fixes for my problem have worked for others, there is a subset where it doesn’t. In searching the web for other solutions, you can see examples where people have tried the same steps with no success. And it seems that their support site has issues with Firefox.

It’s on days like this that I wonder what ever happened to Peter Norton.