My boss wanted to make sure that on one of our servers we were updating our Symantec Anti-Virus definitions on an hourly basis. By default the Symantec Anti-Virus Client will only allow you to do a LiveUpdate once per day. Fortunately, there's a command line tool called VPDN_LU.exe which you can run to do silent updates.

Here are the command line options for the VPDN_LU.exe tool:

/fUpdate

Filter out definitions updates

/fVirusdef

Filter out new AntiVirus definitions updates

/s

Retrieve definitions and product updates in silent mode.

Here are some example usages:

vpdn_lu.exe /fUpdate /s

Retrieve virus definitions silently.

vpdn_lu.exe /fVirusdef /s

Retrieve product updates silently.

vpdn_lu.exe /s

Retrieve product updates and definitions silently.

I've configured our server to silent update just the AntiVirus definitions once an hour (on the top of the hour) using the Windows Scheduled Tasks tool. Using the Symantec AntiVirus I've set up a "Full LiveUpdate" to run at 3:30am—which we determined was a good time to do a full update in case the server needs to reboot after it's run it's update.

NOTE:

I'd recommend only checking for new AntiVirus definitions on an hourly basis. If you also check for product updates, your server may attempt to reboot itself and that could be problematic. Also, I'm not condoning running AntiVirus updates on an hourly basis, it's probably overkill for most situations. However, if it's requested of you, here's what you need to do.

To schedule an hourly update, just follow these steps:

1. Open up the Windows Control Panel.
2. Double-click on the "Scheduled Task" folder.
3. Go to "File > New > Schedule Task".
4. Name your task something useful like, "Symantec AntiVirus Updates - Hourly".
5. Double-click on your new task to edit it's properties.
6. In the "Run" field, enter: "C:\Program Files\Symantec AntiVirus\VPDN_LU.exe" /fUpdate /s

NOTE:

If you did not install Symantec AntiVirus into it's default location, you'll want to specify the correct path to your install.

7. In the "Start in" field, enter: "C:\Program Files\Symantec AntiVirus" (or the correct path to your Symantec AntiVirus install.)
8. In order to avoid problems running the updates in the background, you'll want to run this task under an account that will have the necessary permissions to do the updates. Make sure the "Run as" box specifies a user profile with the necessary permissions to access the Internet and read/write to the Symantec installation folder.
9. Next, click on the "Schedule" tab.
10. Under "Schedule Task", set the option to "Daily"—this should be the default setting.
11. Under "Start time:" enter: 12:00am.
12. Click the "Advanced" button.
13. Click the "Repeat task" checkbox.
14. Under the "Every" entry, enter in: "1 hours" (or whatever interval you want in either hours or minutes.)
15. Under "Duration" enter: "23 hour(s) 59 minute(s)"
16. Click the "If the task is still running, stop it at this time" checkbox field.
17. Click "Ok" to close the "Advanced Schedule Options" box.
18. Click "Ok" to save your new task.
19. Right-click on your new task and select "Run" to test your new event.
20. To ensure that it's running correctly, open up the Symantec AntiVirus client.
21. In the navigation tree pane, expand the "Histories" branch.
22. Select the "Event Log" node.
23. You should now see a list of each LiveUpdate action. Make sure that your test run appears in the Event Log. If everything was set up correctly, then you should start seeing new entries in the Event Log every hour. If not, double check these steps to make sure you didn't miss anything.

NOTE:

At a quick glance, Norton AntiVirus does not appear to ship w/a command line tool to allow silent LiveUpdates. There may be a tool to do it, but I just haven't researched it.

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