Warning-Norton AV: Virus or Anti-Virus

In the past some of you have groaned about Norton Anti-Virus. I have
used it for several years without any trouble was concerned.

A couple weeks the subscrition ran out so I purchased SystemWorks 2006.
Something went wrong which totally trashed the hard disk. Norton
someting inserted almost into the Bios level so no amount of trying to
rebuild the operating system helped. I HAVN'T HAD VIRUS DO THIS MUCH
DAMAGE.

I called their technical support and talked to a nice chap with a heavy
accent. After a while of working with him, his suggestion was to
reformat the HD.... now somehow I could have figured that out without
him.

I then attempted to unload Norton and purchased another AV. All went
well except the computer could not be "seen" by any other computer on
the network. Apparently Norton struck again and changed some value in
the register.... A web search immediately explained how to correct this
problem. Apparently Norton is notorious for this.... doesn't it seem
like their un-install program should be capable of dealing with such a
well know issue... Norton, like a virus is persistent and is hard to
get rid of.

So, I Norton a Virus or an anti-virus program?

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://www.malware-test.com/antivirus.html
http://www.malware-test.com/antispyware.html


B. And some discussion on AV Industry:

http://www.emailbattles.com/archive/battles/virus_aadddbhadc_ia/

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

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1945808,00.asp

When my uptime is important, why would I use just one machine?
An el-crapo PC for <$1000 does just great for average MS Office &
Internet work, leaving a workstation free of the BS so it can max out
speed on Solidworks.

If you want to get rid of unneccessary Win XP Processes, take a look
at:

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2005/07/24/running-windows-with-no-services.aspx

BlackViper.com used to have a lot of similar stuff, but that went down,
though archives are available in at least one place last time I
checked.

http://web.archive.org/web/20041009203141/www.blackviper.com/WinXP/xpprofiles.htm

Bo

 

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

 

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:
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_fully_remove_norton_antivirus_from_my_system.html

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

Best regards,
Mike