Norton killing my PC

[vwd34079]

Just installed norten 2007 as recommended by pc world on a health check and has slowed down my pc BADLY

Any suggestion or ideas as to why?
_________________________________
lynda, moderator

please note forum rule 7

 

[Igorian]

Usually not enough RAM.

 

[vwd34079]

what with 1 gig you sure?

 

[eggplant]

He did say "usually", you dont give a lot of info to go on.....

 

[vwd34079]

What info do you need?

Not very good with Pc at momant

 

[Igorian]

We can only provide information based on what you tell us about your setup hardware and software.

Have you performed a disk cleanup recently?

In my experience, Norton does slow things down and generally requires the machine to be in tip top condition before you install it. I like the anti-virus part of Norton, but the rest is pants (IMHO).

 

[eggplant]

I agree, norton and Symantec AV IMO are excellent, the crud that comes packaged with those security suites however is the exact opposite.

 

[VS]

If you use your PC intelligently you can remain virus and malware free using entirely free solutions such as AVG, Zone Alarm, spywareblaster and Adaware.

Alas, it is my opinion that:
1) PC World and its generally non-specialist employees are a waste of space.
2) Norton is a gimick sold on the back of public hysteria and ignorance as a solution for the masses. As a piece of software it isn't terribly good.

I switched to freeware many years ago and haven't had a virus since.

 

[Ian84]

Its not only me then, I clean installed XP pro on a sata hardrive due to my old drive packing in & my pc had never run so fast until I installed NIS 2007, now it`s running constantly at half speed! I have 4 gigs of ddr2 & about 1.5 gigs is sapped up by system resources. Plus i`m still getting adware & spyware even though the Norton firewall & the auto detect virus scanner is suppose to stop this before its too late. My local PC shop say that Norton & McAfee are a waste of space & they strongly recommend that I switch to F-Secure.

 

[Igorian]

Its not only me then, I clean installed XP pro on a sata hardrive due to my old drive packing in & my pc had never run so fast until I installed NIS 2007, now it`s running constantly at half speed! I have 4 gigs of ddr2 & about 1.5 gigs is sapped up by system resources. Plus i`m still getting adware & spyware even though the Norton firewall & the auto detect virus scanner is suppose to stop this before its too late. My local PC shop say that Norton & McAfee are a waste of space & they strongly recommend that I switch to F-Secure.

Did you mean F-secure? Tis a good product (IMHO). But then so is NAV. As previously mentioned the security suites are pants.

Edit. Did u just change that?

 

[eggplant]

Plus i`m still getting adware & spyware even though the Norton firewall & the auto detect virus scanner is suppose to stop this

since when was it supposed to stop adaware/spyware? a firewall blocks intruders, antivirus blocks virus's.

 

[TGB]

In my (considerable) experience, as I sort them out when they're broke, NIS is OK but it does slow any system down considerably. The latest version 2007 is worst of all. I recommend, as have others, using freeware, such as ZoneAlarm for a firewall, AdAware and Spybot S&D together and run both weekly. Set a scheduled diskcleanUp to run automatically every day and make sure that you also install Windows Defender from the Microsoft site. If you run all theses properly updating them before each scan, you PC should remain free. Also make sure your Windows Updates are fully up to date, set your PC to Autoupdates, but make sure that you click "Custom" when you check, only this way will you get all your driver updates as well. For Antivirus use AVG Free. All are available from various sites, but try ww.computeractive.co.uk/downloads. You must use common senseabout what emails you open as well. The golden rule is "if you don't know who it is from, don't open it". This way you should stay clean. I know believe me!!

 

[Andy2406]

Evening all,

Just my 2p worth

For a really good Antivirus Product, I have used NOD32 by eset and can be found at www.nod32.com which has a very little memory footprint so it does not slow your pc down at all, and has a higher detection rate against unknow virii.

For my systems at home I use the following to keep my systems free of virii and malware

NOD32
MS Defender (new full version and still free)
Zone Alarms (freeware)

with ZA you still need to know what to block and what not to.

I hope this helps

Andy (MCP and CSSA)