Warning-Norton AV: Virus or Anti-Virus

I haven't had anything as dramatic as you (bummer about having to reformat), but since installing Norton, my home system takes a long time to start up - I will get my desktop fairly fast, but I can't launch any applications for another minute or so until the silly Norton popup decides to come up.

And though I have no evidence, I strongly suspect Norton is why it takes FOREVER to start SWx 2007 (2006 starts in a few seconds, 2007 takes up to a minute+, and never less than 30 seconds) Anyone else have extra-slow startup of 2007?

My home Norton is the Norton Internet Secutiry package you can buy at a big-box electronics store - at work, where we have Norton Enterprise (??) everything is stable and spunky.

Ed

BTW - (rant) I'm sure I am missing something basic, but that is a 'something' that I don't really want to have to worry about. I ultimately want my computer to work like my toaster - press the button and it works every time. I ackowledge that many would see that as unrealistic, but its what I want - and why I go with a 'name' company like Norton who ought to know better than me.

Yes Norton does slow down the startup times on programs.. just has to scan all exe's as they load.. I do believe the slow load on 2007 is due to the .NET system that SW now seems to be build on.. I have been working with VB2005 express ever since it came out, most of the load times from my app's are from this......

HOG>>>>

st

Hi Ed,

I had a similiar experience a few years ago, the last time I used a norton product. The program you mentioned I believe is called 'go back' and it does alter your master boot record without telling you and is totally impossible to un-install (no really impossible, there are guides to removal on the net - but it ain't easy).

In my case since my c drive was a striped array it was even more difficult and I did indeed end up reformatting my system.

Since then I've used nod32 from eset.com - a highly rated antivirus software. It's small, fast, tiny and quick. And I havn't had a single problem with it. I don't miss the bloatiness of systemworks.

Now, if anyone knows of a cd burning program that just burns discs simply (unlike nero which I recently installed which is comprised of about 100 seperate programs now)....

Zander

Ed wrote:

Ditto, using NOD32 here as well. The reduced overhead when using NOD32, opposed to Norton, on older PC's is very noticable.

John Layne

Have suffered through way too many friends, neighbors, family using Norton products. In my experience, the definitions are updated too infrequently and the software is generally bloated.

I prefer simple virus tools such as AVG, Avira, Avast to the big names like McAfee and Norton. My experience has also been that the big names are the most susceptible (targeted) in direct viral attack and exploit.

Removals of either of the McAfee and Norton have also been more research intensive than any other virus scanning softwares I've ever experienced.

Ed wrote:

Yes Norton AV is well known virus.

I have said that many times here on this and other forums. I'm sure that there are some peeps that have it working fine with no slowdown whatsoever, however that hasn't been my experience.

I run AVG Pro. and I have NEVER been disappointed.

Muggs

Ed wrote:

I just switched from Norton to AVG and eWido (now also AVG) when I built my new computer less than a year ago. Hard to compare apples to apples since the hardware update of the new computer, but I find AVG to be much less intrusive than Norton. Also, AVG is set up to be totally automatic. I don't have to go in and run a weekly or biweekly or monthly system scan because the Norton scheduler screwed up. AVG is always on the ball and doesn't interfere with other background apps like Diskeeper and BOINC the way Norton did.

--Scott

I used to work as a supervisor for a service tech department and saw more than my share of Norton, or for that matter, Symantec related damage. More often than not it was cheaper to do a format and reinstall of the OS than it was to try and repair it. That included a transfer of all existing client data so it would not be lost during the format.

After many Norton related incidents I only wish Norton onto the worst of people. As said, its not software, it's a virus.

Greg Jankowski in his CAD Admin boot camp presentation singles out Norton as the worst of the worst as far as playing nice with other applications, and also said that the company wasn't responsive to SW's requests for help.

I used to use AVG, but it didn't get rid of a persistent problem, so I changed to Bit Defender, which works great.

I use Bit Defender Pro, but it never gets used EXCEPT when I go online for a mandatory update from Microsoft.

The number of hours required by my friends to keep their PCs in good working order just convinces me all the more to run a stripped down WinXP w/o internet access.

Bo

matt wrote:

Muggs,

I was evaluating AV software recently. We tried AVG and AntiVir. Both have no discernable bad effects on SW. However, I found some evaluations of their effectiveness in stopping threats and found that AVG was not quite up to snuff. AntiVir was better than Norton's Corporate software. I don't remember the site I found this eval on.

Hey TOP,

If you run across it again, I would be interested in reading it.

Thanks, Muggs

T> Muggs,

A. Lots of Review type sites out there & here are a few:

B. And some discussion on AV Industry:

C. Eweek's earlier note about Microsoft recommending Wipe & Reinstall rather than trying to "fix" malware infestations:

When my uptime is important, why would I use just one machine? An el-crapo PC for Hey TOP,

Ditto on nod32. I used it a couple of years back, and it was very good on resources. I then started using AVG about a year ago. Its free, auto updates, and its great on resources. Simple fact is, if you are careful on what emails you open (you should NEVER open attachments of course), then the chance of gettign a virus is slim. I havent had a virus in about 6 years...

Very interesting! Thanks Bo.

Muggs

Bo wrote:

Hi all,

These are fantastic comments and suggestions!

Thanks,

EdT

One other thing about Norton that we recently saw or think we saw.

Norton Corporate edition was installed on Server 2003. On workstations that had the corresponding version of Norton installed, network bandwidth remained the same as before the install. All other workstations that didn't have that version of Norton installed slowed down to 100 baseT speed from the gigabit we had. When the real time checking on the Server was turned off, then the workstations with that version of Norton slowed down also. Has anybody else seen this? It appears that Norton does something to throttle bandwidth on the server unless A. Real time scan is running on the server and B. the client is running the same version of Norton with real time scan turned on. Has anyone else seen this?

I was poking around on SW subscription service and found out that SW has been tested with about four or five AV products. Of interest is that I didn't see any Enterprise level products or suggested settings for the products listed. Given the complexity of current AV products it would be nice to know what settings work or don't work. Norton AV 2005 was tested, and so were a few others. We have Norton 2005 on a few machines and it seems to tangle with SW more often than not.

FWIW, a website that has a step-by-step guide for elminating NAV from your computer:

I used this on a few computers recently and it worked perfectly.

Best regards, Mike