Symantec can go to Hell

[philipwhiteold]

Looks like I'm not the only one to have poor performance because of Norton Antivirus. Several users at both ocforums and sitepoint forums have reported the same. As far as I know its only affecting Windows XP Home Edition with servicepack 1.

Right click time on folders is ridiculously long and aplications like microsoft office are extremely slow loading as well. THere are a few things you can do that might help.

1. Turn off auto updates. Just remember to update your defs every week or so.
2. Upgrade to the newest version of norton. I've heard the newest downloadable trial version solves this.
3. Use norton corporate if work will let you.
4. Look into buying a different virus scan program or changing operating systems. :(

[dpetersam]

Thanks for the tip!

[YaSO]

AVG Anti-Virus

I highly recommend AVG Anti-Virus http://www.grisoft.com/ to all of you. Free and works great. In fact, I personally prefer AVG to Norton. Norton can create so many problems as Phil pointed out. I suppose there is a way to get it work right but the configuration is so complicated and unfriendly to regular users. It's kind of silly to have a setup like that for home computer users(Like Windows XP Home and Pro).

[Nortonphobe]

I agree about AVG anti-virus. Have just gone through hell with Norton Systemworks 2004, Norton Personal firewall 2004. Paid £70:00p for their stuff and find I can activate their products no longer. Okay, I admit I have sustained a few crashes over the last few weeks due to an electrical fault in the domestic electricity supply to my Flat which knocked the computer out every time. Each time the electricity was supposedly repaired and failed on many occasions my computer was virtually unusable again without a re-install.
The last time this happened was a couple of days ago and this time the electricians went to town as they were fed up of being called out so many times. It eventually became known that part of the wiring to my Flat had almost burned through because of arcing from a short circuit hidden inside a conduit. So they replaced all of the wiring this time. Got my computer up and running again, went to install Norton which was done but when I tried to activate it I received an error message telling me I had exceeded the allowable amount of installations for this product.

Now running AVG and Sygate personal firewall, both freeware too. As far as I am concerned Norton can go to Hell and stay there. Will never buy any further Norton products ever again.

[YaSO]

It is rumored that MS will integrate Anti-virus feature into XP SP2; it would be interesting to see what they will do. If their Anti-virus works like AVG, then I would say it would be a great improvement over XP and XP SP1, but will it? Also there was a talk of antitrust. Are they really going to do it ...?

[Kwak]

We'll wait and see. I am also using AVG since it was free and Pc-Cillin since I had a cd lying around. So far so good. Plus I run adaware and spybot sd.

[philipwhite]

I love spybot s&d. Have been using it forever. I've saved a few computers with that and cwshredder. As for antivirus I've had the best luck with symantec corporate edition. The updater seams to be a bit friendlier.