To Norton or not to Norton

KILL_BILL

Norton about 4 or 5 years ago was okay but the recent additions ahve serioudsly bloated the software and hog system resources

i have used avast for the past couple of years - very effective and is free to download in a non commerical enviroment- and updates itself a couple of times each day so unlike norton which updates once a week it giove you full protection from the latest virus

Katykat

Expresso, I did what you advised, removed Norton and installed AVG anti virus and spyware deptector. When I ran it it found 53 files with adware or tracking files. So I've deleted them and await to see if my PC runs any quicker. Thanks for that. Can anyone say if XP firewall is effective?

judderman62

Katykat wrote: »

Expresso, I did what you advised, removed Norton and installed AVG anti virus and spyware deptector. When I ran it it found 53 files with adware or tracking files. So I've deleted them and await to see if my PC runs any quicker. Thanks for that. Can anyone say if XP firewall is effective?

Most times I've read/heard the answer was a resounding No

I'd recommend Comodo - want to swap to that one myself sometime

Jud

Quasar

I used to have Norton then ditched it and installed the following free programs:

Sunbelt Kerio
AVG
Adaware
spybot
Ccleaner

Faster computer, security that can be updated, and NEVER a virus so far - 18 months on. Only the odd tracking cookie that I can remove when I run my anty-spyware.

I have no hesitation in recommending the above software - and would suggest to check daily for updates (especially AVG), and run it at least once a week or more.

Katykat

I unistalled Norton as above, installed AVG virus & spyware, deleted all the 53 malaware items and now my computer is REALLY REALLY slow. its taken 45 minutes to load this site. What have i done????

ssjx

If you look at the taskmanager (ctrl+alt+del should give you the option) can you see any processes that are showing a high cpu usage? I am wondering if your computer is busy running a scheduled scan for viruses/spyware.

Hurdler

Hello all - I have had Norton ever since I got this Dell PC (now ab0ut 4 years old) and I've just blithely renewed the subs until this year - when i joined MSE!
I have noticed an oddity - and I think from what I've seen that Norton could be a factor... Live Update rules keep popping up continually (so much so - it makes playing games like Command and Conquer impossible!). I recently put in some more memory and have recently had lots of Virtual paging issues... despite upping the paging allowance to 1.5 times the amount of memory!

I suspect that the constant rule update and virtual paging issues are related as they started almost immediately after some Live Update "corruption" issue that seemed to be resolved after an update.

My plan is to go with AVG for Virus Protection and Zone Alarm for internet security....
Have recently defragged the HD and uninstalled a bunch of stuff I no longer use - just in case that was having a bearing on the paging issue.

Thanks for the tool link to uninstall Norton... useful to have!

Any other words of advice?

Ghost

It makes me laugh how everyone bleats on about how rubbish Norton is and how brilliantly wonderful AVG Free is.

I have used Norton for many years without one single problem - except my virus definitions had expired. So, after reading much bleating on this forum about AVG, I installed AVG over the weekend.

The result?

See my thread here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=527567 which, by the way, no one has bothered to respond to.

Seems everyone's happy to dish out their recommendations willy-nilly and push AVG at every opportunity, but not so quick off the mark to help out when it's needed.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of those that bleat on have never even used Norton in the first place!

espresso

Ghost wrote: »

It makes me laugh how everyone bleats on about how rubbish Norton is and how brilliantly wonderful AVG Free is.

I have used Norton for many years without one single problem - except my virus definitions had expired. So, after reading much bleating on this forum about AVG, I installed AVG over the weekend.

The result?

See my thread here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=527567 which, by the way, no one has bothered to respond to.

Seems everyone's happy to dish out their recommendations willy-nilly and push AVG at every opportunity, but not so quick off the mark to help out when it's needed.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of those that bleat on have never even used Norton in the first place!

Bit of a winge!

Have you tried looking through the Help i.e.

Make sure that AVG Plug-in for Outlook is not denied by MS Office program.

• run MS Outlook
• go to the Help menu->About MS Outlook-> Disabled Items
• select AVG Free Edition item and use Enable option
• if there is no AVG Free Edition for Windows item in Disabled Items, please follow steps in FAQ 682

There is also a forum that you could access.

Ghost

Yeah, that was a bit of a whinge, probably due to being totally pi**ed off because of my time wasted.

To clarify: Outlook initially worked okay on the first day after installation. On the second day, Outlook threw a wobbly, was impossible to work in, and eventually the application hung.

Thanks for your advice, espresso, but that's not the source of the problem.

The AVG plug-in was, indeed, installed in Outlook but I have had to disable it myself to get Outlook to work. I've also checked my firewall settings (just in case) and they are set correctly for AVG.

I also checked out their FAQ and it doesn't seem to address the issue.

The only thing I did differently on day 2 was to update AVG.

Thanks anyway.