Norton Protection Center

[Arkroyal]

Never been a fan of Norton, but it came free with BT broadband package.

It's now telling me that my protection updates need attention. Sooo I run liveupdate, and all I get is a string of error messages:

'LU1847 LiveUpdate could not determine if there is an update for this product because the update list for this product is corrupted'

Is this my problem, or theirs.

Soon be dumping it and loading AVG :ugh:

[hellsbrink]

That, iirc, is a glitch in the registry regarding Norton which could have been caused by a faulty install or corrupted update. Since you'll (generally, unless you feel like letting Norton do a "remote assistance") have to rip out Norton and reinstall it to cure that, I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you replace it or not.

[Shunter]

Get rid. Norton is a horrible piece of lardy bloatware which seems to get worse every year. AVG is a perfectly capable anti-virus, and for most cases the built-in XPSP2 firewall is more than adequate. Hell, Norton can't even uninstall itself a lot of the time, hence Symantec had to release a utility to do it!

This here laptop sits on the side in our kitchen for general use, never gets switched off, has a public IP address, AVG and the XP firewall. Problems? None.

[Arkroyal]

Thanks, all

Yeah, getting rid of it was quite a job, with the Norton tool finally being found. It seems my addition of Spybot was conflicting with Norton.

Now BTYahoo internet seem hell bent on getting me to re install Norton!

Trouble is, without Spybot I keep getting invaded by all kinds of rubbish. Norton claim to be ok against spyware, but I thing otherwise.

[Tarq57]

I think it's more correct to say that the installation of Norton chooses to conflict with anything it doesn't like, Spybot being one of them.
Good list above, personally I find AdAware to be buggy and ineffective, would rather use the very well thought of Superantispyware (http://www.superantispyware.com/)
Others worthy of mention include Threatfire, SpywareTerminator (without Clam or WSG installed) and AVG AS, which will at some stage loose support, as it is about to be incorporated into the suite.

[BeechNut]

Norton has become at best bloatware, at worst, a virus itself.

Get rid of it. Get AVG for anti-virus (best of all, it's free) and there's a ton more freeware for anti-spyware, etc.

And after you trash it, if you know how, edit out every last trace of it from the registry.

Beech

[hellsbrink]

Again, everyone, the Norton Removal Tool does NOT remove all traces of Norton from your system. There will be files left and you MUST clean out your registry afterwards.

[tired-flyboy]

Found a nice little virus removal tool.

here from Malwarebytes (http://www.malwarebytes.org)

best bit about this:

1. it's free
2. like hijack this, it provides a summary of the scan, complete with registry addresses of the parts that it has been unable to clean.

finally its a lot quicker than norton.

I use this in conjuction with Advanced windows care here from iobit (http://iobit.com)

:ok:

[Wilton Shagpile]

I used to have Norton (2006) and got rid of it last year after getting fed up with the performance issues (the computer, not me.)

I tried the trial versions if AVG and others and none of them seemed any better...in fact a couple were worse! The PC kept slowing down and it was rendererd unusuable a lot of the time.

In despair, I returned to Norton as at least I knew what it was like....the 2008 version of Internet Security seems completely different now! I turned off all the automatic updates (I run them myself when I have time) and it runs quite happily in the background without doing anything I don't tell it to. Even the boot up is a lot quicker - it used to take about 5 minutes before now it is just the same as it was with no AV software installed.

[Shack37]

I have Norton360 at the moment, installed Dec 2007.
Having read all posts here I'm tempted to give AVG a try. My question, possibly silly to the experts, is...........should Norton be removed completely before downloading AVG and does this leave me briefly unprotected? An idiots guide might help.:hmm:
Cheers,
s37

[hellsbrink]

It's always better to uninstall something like Norton before installing another AV, just make sure you download AVG and any update files first and then make sure you are not online whilst installing it.

[matt_hooks]

Yes, Norton are trying to follow the Micros###e lead, by getting their product bundled with as many new PC's as possible. However, in every instance, I've found that by getting rid of it, cleaning the computer of all traces and then installing standalone AV and firewall software (normal choices are Avira for AV and Zonealarm for firewall, both industry standard products for free) the startup performance and general speed of the machine is massively improved.

I personally would never pay for anti virus software, why would you when there's so much good stuff about for free?

And as for uninstalling Norton before installing another AV product, yes, it's ABSOLUTELY necessary. If you don't then Norton will throw a major hissy fit and try and delete all the virus definitions etc. for the new product. I've seen it done as an experiment, and the computer refused to respond to ANYTHING for four whole hours, and this was a fast machine. Eventually it sorted itself out, but the installations of Norton and the new AV product were both severely damaged, and some data was lost from the hard disk!

If you download the installation files, then disconnect from the net, you can perform an uninstall of Norton, fully clean the system and install your chosen AV product in complete safety.

[Shack37]

Thanks for the advice and info guys. I'm off to give it a go.
s37

[NotPilotAtALL]

Hi,

I use EZ antivirus (computer associate) from ages.
It's very resources friendly (important for me as my PC is a gaming machine offline and online!)
It's a annual fee of 40 $ .. but it's worth for this very good antivirus.
Very easy to set ... no a gas factory like Norton..and runin silent mode.
Never a prob over 5 years .

http://shop.ca.com/virus/antivirus.aspx

Regards.

[Shack37]

Norton now removed and running with Avast. I tried downloading AVG three times and failed getting a message saying "server reset" so I got Avast instead. After removing Norton with the removal tool (thanks Mike) I was able to download AVG, no problem. Any preferences out there between Avast and AVG.
The reboot is faster but the main improvement is in performance/speed. Thanks all.
s37

[hellsbrink]

Shack

One last thing. Remember to look through your PC for any folders named "Symantec" and/or "Norton/NIS" as the removal tool will leave stuff behind. Also, you will need to cleanse the registry as I can guarantee there is a stinkload of registry entries regarding Norton left behind despite you using the Norton leaves-a-lot-behind-while-preteding-it's-a-removal tool.

[Shack37]

Hellsbrink, thanks for that, a whole cartload of symantec/norton/nis came out in a search and is now deleted. I have also used a registry scan/optimizer tool so I hope that's it. My laptop is certainly much faster since binning Norton.
I'll stick with AVAST and keep AVG available on the desktop for the moment.
cheers
s37