Pro's and con's of having a Norton package on your PC?

TUVOK

I've done a search re this query but most appear to be many years old and I'm not sure if the if the views are still relevant?
I bought a new PC last Xmas from a local PC shop, it's used every day, sometimes for quite a few hours, I have noticed no 'slowing' of the speed of operations during this period
My Norton screen today states that the following things are hindering the Pc and slowing it down:
Faulty driver 5
374 Broken registry keys.
Registry issues 374.
Apps slowing down 5.
6225 mb of 'clutter'
Browser junk 1368mb
Broken short cuts

To a non tech person like myself the list seems ominous! but I remember some comments from this Techie Stuff page to slate Norton as a waste of time, dangerous and that it actually harms your PC.
I'm not sure quite what to do in a few months time when the original free subscription expire?

Any comments, views and help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.



 

Olinda99

there are no pros of Norton - only cons 

my advice is to uninstall it immediately

I have assumed in this post that you are running Windows 11

Neil_Jones

TUVOK said:

I've done a search re this query but most appear to be many years old and I'm not sure if the if the views are still relevant?
I bought a new PC last Xmas from a local PC shop, it's used every day, sometimes for quite a few hours, I have noticed no 'slowing' of the speed of operations during this period
My Norton screen today states that the following things are hindering the Pc and slowing it down:
Faulty driver 5
374 Broken registry keys.
Registry issues 374.
Apps slowing down 5.
6225 mb of 'clutter'
Browser junk 1368mb
Broken short cuts

To a non tech person like myself the list seems ominous! but I remember some comments from this Techie Stuff page to slate Norton as a waste of time, dangerous and that it actually harms your PC.
I'm not sure quite what to do in a few months time when the original free subscription expire?

Any comments, views and help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.



 

Drivers either work or they don't.  If they didn't you'd have known about it by now.

Registry issues are irrelevant in this day and age, again if it was broken you'd have known about it straight away.

Apps slowing down - possible but again unless the computer is older than God's dog you wouldn't really notice it.

Clutter you can clear yourself - type "Disk Cleanup" in the search bar.  Browser "junk" is only junk until you realise it logs you out of everything...

Broken short cuts - in modern Windows this is normal.

TL;DR - you don't need Norton.

LightFlare

Olinda99 said:

there are no pros of Norton - only cons 

my advice is to uninstall it immediately

I have assumed in this post that you are running Windows 11

100% this 

_Jem_

With Windows 10 or 11 you really don't need a paid AV, Using Windows defender is good enough. 

If you want to feel a bit more protective then installing malwarebytes will do. 

TUVOK

Thanks for all replies, all pretty conclusive that Norton is a waste of time, I can now safely not renew my subscription.

Chickereeeee

Olinda99 said:

there are no pros of Norton - only cons 

my advice is to uninstall it immediately

I have assumed in this post that you are running Windows 11

Well, the Pros are all on Norton's side....

TUVOK

If I do not re-subscribe to Norton later this year do I simply remove it from my PC or is there a special way to ensure that all parts of it are totally removed from the system, I believe that I have read in the past that it's not a simple removal?

_Jem_

TUVOK said:

If I do not re-subscribe to Norton later this year do I simply remove it from my PC or is there a special way to ensure that all parts of it are totally removed from the system, I believe that I have read in the past that it's not a simple removal?

It's been a very long time since I had Norton, but I'm sure they had their own uninstall program on their website you would use to completely get rid of everything. 

Neil_Jones

Norton Removal Tool will get shot of it (unless you have Norton Family, in which case there's a prerequisite):

https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v15972972

It used to be you're supposed to uninstall it traditionally (and that was the advice on Norton's website) before using the tool, but that's changed at some point to just use the tool.

_Jem_

@Neil_Jones I thought I remembered right, and yes that's right years ago when I had Norton you had to uninstall it through windows and then use their tool.