Norton Antivirus

Wirenth

My new PC arrived with Norton on it (four years ago). It was cranky, constantly required updating and resetting...so I got rid of it and installed McCaffee.

Now that I'm older and wiser (and an MSEr), I've gone for the free route with AVG, SpywareBlaster, SpywareGuard, Spybot, Adaware and Zonealarm...

hendersonb

Used to back norton AV/symantec all the way but in recent years it has got more and more bloated which slows down machines and trys to do too much for you. I am now using Windows One Care BETA i've found it much better. Before using that I used Computer Associates EZ Trust AV.

As for spyware MS Antispyware and the ones it can't remove i do manually

wolfman

rsykes2000 wrote:

I don't use it. Found it is RAM and CPU-time -hungry and too intrusive. Use McAfee v8 instead, far nicer program all round.

What? McAfee v8 is more resource hungry that Norton! I've seen the Norton Internet Security and it uses up about 40-45mb of resources in total. That's av, anti-spyware, firewall, and spam blocker. That's very reasonable, Nod32 alone uses up about 17mb.

There's a lot of Norton bashing going on here, it's often very common, but people forget that products can improve. At work, Norton 2006 is actually very light. Not as light as Nod32 (which I have at home) but lighter than Avast, AVG and McAfee as examples.

It was Norton 2004 that brought about the bashing and it's never really lost the reputation.

If there was a problem with Norton it'd be the difficulty people sometimes have with uninstalling, slow scanning, the poor support (from what I've read), and the fact there are better alternatives. It is still though a good all in one package that is reasonable and ideal for the average user.

gunneradt

ive got 6 pcs at home and use nod32 on 4 and avg on the 2 others. Ive seen some real mess caused by norton - mainly because it's hard to configure. If I were going to use a symantec product I would use antivirus corporate - far less system hungry than nortons av or is. I like bit defender too.

dc

Norton slows down my computer so much, it is a pain. Just when you think you got it sorted it ramdomly stops everything in its tracks. It is going.

zacspeed_2

intel wrote:

Can you expand on that, In like why you may think that is and
what can users do to prevent this, and what versions of Norton are
the main culprit and what virus names.. as it maybe virus specific failures.


:beer:

I'll see if I can get a random screen grab over the weekend & Then you'll see what I mean.
I would assume that most of the issues arise due to pilot error (out of date virus defenitions, incorrect scan settings etc).

oldrimes

The reason that connection speed can be important, is because anti virus protection has to be kept up to date in order for it to be effective.

In terms of finding problems, haven't found any difference in functionality between Norton and AVG. What I was commenting on in earlier post was specific issues in keeping Norton updated when on dialup, and this could be due to the version of Norton.

On dialup access - the problem I encountered with Norton was it took a long time to download updates.

If all you are doing is a daily quick 2 minutes connect to download emails - it can be a bit inconvenient for the connection to be taken over by the Antivirus update download, and you have to wait 20 mins for it to finish, before you got email downloaded.

We found people often cancelled the antivirus update, just to get their email (so to get on with their work), over time this meant the antivirus became ineffective because it wasn't getting updated.

Replacing Norton with AVG meant that downloading updates went to about 5 minutes or less usually (although have encountered some that took 1/2 hour!), which means that the antivirus software is now kept up to date.

Something else worth mentioning is that AVG is only free for personal use - if you are using it for a business or charity - you should use the 'paid for' version.

cwoodham

I've used AVG in the past and found it excellent. After I upgraded my PC to Windows XP about 6 months ago, the company who did it preinstalled Norton Antivirus. I haven't had a problem with it so far but its due for renewal in about two weeks. Having read a lot of stuff on this forum about Norton, I'm going go to back to AVG. Not looking forward to uninstalling Norton, but I've read how to do it on this forum so hope all goes well.

chunter

AVG for me.
If you're on dial up or using less then 512Mbyte RAm i would avoid the Norton beast.
I've taken the 3 month free version off new pcs because they're on dialup or because I know they'll not buy the thing after 3 months.
Having it there without the updated virus patterns gives a false sense of security (i've seen this many times).

and it does get in the way and it is hard to uninstall,
even worse than that McAfee thing Dell are peddling at the minute.
To get rid of the thing you have to go through the entire registration process.
To update the thing you have to go onto the website and type in usernames and passwords..

I read a decent editorial in one of the pc magazines recently which asked who is the master and who is the slave. Are we there to service the software or is the software supposed to keep us right. Software updates should be as unintrusive as possible. Not constantly in your face.
anyway, apologies for the rant.

intel

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Norton-Removal-Tool-Download-26173.html

Norton Removal Tool descriptionDownloadSymNRT is a program that can remove some Norton software from your computer. SymNRT runs on Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

SymNRT should be used only if you have tried to uninstall the Norton program using Windows Add/Remove Programs and that did not work.

SymNRT will remove these--and only these--Norton programs:
· Norton AntiVirus 2004/2005
· Norton AntiVirus Professional 2004
· Norton AntiVirus 3, 5 and 10 User Pack 2004/2005
· Norton SystemWorks 2004/2004 Professional Edition
· Norton SystemWorks 2005/2005 Premier edition
· Norton Password Manager 2004
· Norton Internet Security 2004/2005
· Norton Internet Security 5 and 10 User Pack 2004/2005
· Norton Personal Firewall 2004/2005
· Norton AntiSpam 2004/2005
· Ghost 2003 or Ghost Version 9.0

:beer: Thanks Browntoa.. Taken from an Earierl Posting.