goodby Symantec

Frank Fusco

Member
Messages
12,782
Location
Mountain Home, Arkansas
I have been a Norton's/Symantec user for many years but that may have ended. My computer has been down to a crawl for several months and I had no idea what the problem was. Tried all the usual fixes. Well, yesterday, I started getting Symantec error messages. Tried running Norton's utilities and got more strange messages. Decided to clean it all out. Uninstalled everything Norton or Symantec. Wow! 'Puter zips right along now, like the old days. For the moment, I'm without virus protection but will download AVG in a few mins and use that. It has worked well for my wife.
 
Very impressed with AVG. Of course if you reinstall Norton it may work fine now. Software is strange sometimes.

Which reminds me. I need to do some cleaning on my computer and defrag and all that good stuff. If I could quit using it long enough that is.
 
Frank...I used to be a walking advertisement for Symantec.....Then when I couldn't get their products off my machine without destroying most of the other software on it......I quit using it.
 
Last edited:
I'm a bit biased, because I work for a company that competed* with Symantec in one aspect of their system maintenance suite, but the Norton security products I've seen are more invasive and pervasive than a lot of the viruses and junk they're supposed to stop. I won't install them on my machines. AVG should keep you well-covered.




* Actually, it's no longer a competition...we cleaned their clock. Our product outsells the combined competition (from all companies) 20 to 1. ;)
 
I dumped norton a couple of years ago when I was still running win98se.

It had taken over seemed like. I like to have never got it all off the computer.
 
I'm a bit biased, because I work for a company that competed* with Symantec in one aspect of their system maintenance suite, but the Norton security products I've seen are more invasive and pervasive than a lot of the viruses and junk they're supposed to stop. I won't install them on my machines. AVG should keep you well-covered.




* Actually, it's no longer a competition...we cleaned their clock. Our product outsells the combined competition (from all companies) 20 to 1. ;)

Vaughn and Ken, y'all nailed it. I uninstalled. Was happy. Rebooted couple times for good measure. Few minutes ago the big Norton's update screen was running. :bang: And I can't find the AVG I downloaded. :bang: :bang:
 
I'm a bit biased, because I work for a company that competed* with Symantec in one aspect of their system maintenance suite, but the Norton security products I've seen are more invasive and pervasive than a lot of the viruses and junk they're supposed to stop. I won't install them on my machines. AVG should keep you well-covered.




* Actually, it's no longer a competition...we cleaned their clock. Our product outsells the combined competition (from all companies) 20 to 1. ;)

And which product might that be?

If you don't want to post it here...how about a PM?
 
Symantec

We used to use this product until one day I did a virus scan with another virus scanner and found like 50 virus's and spyware programs that Norton didn't.

One problem that I have seen with norton is that it is never really un-installed completely. I know after my uninstall, I had to edit the registry to delete entries that norton added, then had to get another program called Unlock to unlock Nortons protected directories so I could delete them as well.

A royal pain.

and dare I say that McaFee is getting to the point that its a pain as well...
I think we should bring back DOS!!!
 
We used to use this product until one day I did a virus scan with another virus scanner and found like 50 virus's and spyware programs that Norton didn't.

One problem that I have seen with norton is that it is never really un-installed completely. I know after my uninstall, I had to edit the registry to delete entries that norton added, then had to get another program called Unlock to unlock Nortons protected directories so I could delete them as well.

A royal pain.

and dare I say that McaFee is getting to the point that its a pain as well...
I think we should bring back DOS!!!

I managed to uninstall the Norton's update but still can't find AVG. Might have to download someting else. Oh, well.
 
Frank,

Is this what you are looking for?

http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html

I use it on my PC, and it's been very good... Use Macs most of the time, so I don't have anything:thumb:...especially Norton/Symantec!:doh:

Actually, I have downloaded it twice and get a message saying it has been downloaded successfully. But, I can't find it. Even a file search goes on forever without success. I might try a file search then let it run overnight.
 
Frank,

You should not have to wait for more than a minute or so at the very most.... Any longer and something is not right. :huh:

If you download, do it to the desktop so you can see it right away.:thumb:
 
Are you sure the problem lies within you Norton Anti-Virus? I have McAfee and I though that was the problem with my computer. It was super slow, things were all messed up, everything seemed to be getting bad about the time we re-did the McAfee thing...

Then my wife talked to her computer guy that does all the computer stuff at her school and he asked one question...

"You did not update your Mircrosoft Internet Explorer did you?"

Since the answer was yes, as we recently downloaded the new version 7 update. Well we scrapped that and now use Morilla Firefox as a browser and this computer is just like new. I guess they have had trouble with Microsoft Internet Explorer's update.

It might not be your problem, but thought I would throw it out to you as a potential problem anyway.
 
I dumped Norton about a year ago and haven't looked back. AVG Free is running on all three of my home PC's with good success. Can't remember what I'm running on the Linux fileserver. The only thing I've had to do with AVG is download the latest version around the beginning of the year since the free version is only supported for the latest release. Norton lost my business when they told me that I'd activated too many times--their fault since the software made me activate every two weeks. After an hour on the phone I finally got them to allow me to reactivate. Considering I what I had invested in licenses I was not happy.
 
I eventually used the troubleshooting link for the AVG and was able to download normally. It is working fine.
The Norton's uninstall says it removes all traces of Norton/Symantec files but that is not true. They must be sought out and exterminated individually.
 
Top