• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

avast and norton (1 Viewer)

njlarsen

njlarsen

Gallery Moderator
Opus Editor
Supporter
Barbados
can Avast and norton co-exist?

My wife's laptop has for a while had symantec antivirus, v10, full version installed. Yesterday I got suspicious, downloaded avast, which found a trojan and some other type of malware. Avast reports that it is problematic to have both itself and norton installed at the same time: is that correct, should I uninstall the older Norton?

as far as I know, this version of norton includes a firewall. If I uninstall it, should I turn on the windows firewall (the machine runs XP) or should I download some other firewall?

thanks
Niels
 
Hi Niels

The only bit of that that I can answer, is that no, you shouldn't have 2 firewalls running at the same time.

D
 
As Delia said, never run more than one firewall, Niels.

The firewall in XP isn't as good as the one in Vista/7, as there's no outbound control. Zonealarm is a free firewall that's pretty good; I use it on my XP boxes..
 
Sorry Niels, I forgot to say that no two Antivirus products can coexist if they are resident. They both put hooks into the System to check files before they can do any damage (it's a bit more complicated than that, but it's pretty accurate |=)|)
 
IMO Avast is better than Norton and you shouldn't have 2 anti-virus running.

I use Avira and Windows Firewall myself and I'm running Windows 7 and I don't seem to get any unwanted stuff on my system.
 
OK, I used the windows add/remove programs to remove the symantec antivirus, and having done that, I turned windows firewall off. Going back to add/remove programs, symantec liveupdate is still there, and when I click remove, I am told that there are still symantec components that are registered with liveupdate, and that they need to be removed before liveupdate should be removed. So which are these still existing components and how do I remove them?

Niels
 
njlarsen said:
OK, I used the windows add/remove programs to remove the symantec antivirus, and having done that, I turned windows firewall off. Going back to add/remove programs, symantec liveupdate is still there, and when I click remove, I am told that there are still symantec components that are registered with liveupdate, and that they need to be removed before liveupdate should be removed. So which are these still existing components and how do I remove them?

Niels
Click to expand...

You shouldn't turn Windows Firewall off until you install another firewall, Niels, and usually the new firewall (assuming it's Zonealarm) will disable Windows Firewall for you.

Getting rid of any Symantec/Norton product can be a PITA, but they do provide removal tools:

This is for older Norton software, a google search will find a newer version if you need it.
 
its also worth looking to see what programs are starting up when you first boot and go online. Even if you remove some software there is sufficient remaining to slow down your boot process and effect your online speed etc.

select Start- Run in the box marked 'open' type the word msconfig click OK
In the 'System configuration Utility ' window select the 'Start up' tab

Untick any programs that you have either uninstalled or do not use. Also untick any programs you do not want starting up automatically when you boot your PC like, Office , Nero, WinMedia, MSM etc etc

When finished click on 'Apply' the 'Ok' the select 'Exit without restart'

Thats it. When you next boot your system you'll get a message saying 'changes have been made ' blah blah just tick the box saying' don't remind me next time ' and click ok .

You should find your boot time is quicker and there will be less tasks running hoging your resources.

If you have inadvertently unticked anything vital simply go through the same process again and re-tick the item/s you want to start up ....simples
 
Last edited:
I just ran the automatic removal utility that Chris linked to, and that seemed to do the trick with removing the rest of symantec (I hope).

I will look into the msconfig thing

Niels
 
There is one free antivirus which you can run along side another antivirus programme and that is Malwarebytes free http://www.malwarebytes.org/
This is because it does not run any resident parts. Very useful as a second opinion as no antivirus programme is 100%, just remember that you have to manually update it each time before running. It does not run at start up, everything is manual. Zone Alarm free firewall 9.2 is the latest and best from what I have read.
 
MalwareBytes is not an antivirus programme, but rather an antimalware programme that doesn't help to protect your system, unless you get the paid for version. It only helps to clean your system should an infection strike.
 
Hi Niels

This is slightly off-topic but hope it helps any frustrated pc users! A few years ago I went to the local computer shop because my machine was running very slowly. I used Norton at the time and was also due to renew my subscription to the company so I asked if they sold the latest version. His reply was that he did not rate it at all but stocked somehting called Panda Internet Security (firewall, anti-virus etc). He was quite happy for me to go to get Norton from another store (for twice the price of the Panda product) and said he was glad that some people did because the problems it caused gave him loads of repair work! I took his advice, and ended up changing to Panda and have been much happier with system performance since then.

I also regularly defragment, run Malwarebytes and Spybot to ensure smooth runnings.

I am certainly no ITC expert but have heard of many people experiencing problems with Norton products.

Hope this helps

Andrew
 
If you Google any of the security programmes you will find plenty of people who have had problems, it does not matter which one you look at. Just have a look at what people write in the reviews on Amazon in the reviews. Despite swearing I never would I came back to Norton Security Suite (£21 for three computers from Amazon) and found it is a very different beast from a few years ago, no more system resource hogging. People have problems with the free stuff too, my brother runs Avast Free with Spybot and ended up badly infected and having to do a system re install. I put Norton on after a free trial to shift a trojan down loader which integrated itself into Firefox on my wife's computer that my existing AVG free had let on and could not 'see', it only saw the regular supply of new trojans when a manual scan was run. So now I have Norton on two XP machines and a Windows 7 laptop with no problems and run an occasional scan with Malwarebytes for a second opinion. So far after 18 months no problems or noticeable resource hit. My wife's computer is seven years old with XP and has 1mb RAM so I think that would show any resource problems up. None of them are perfect!
 
Hi Mike

Interesting comments - sounds like a big improvement in the Norton camp! Be interesting to know which are the most efficient brands at picking up viruses, spyware etc these days.

Cheers

Andrew
 
Warning! This thread is more than 14 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Similar threads

B
Meopta Meopro HD 8x32--first impressions and thoughts
Replies
19
Views
3K
lmans66
lmans66
Troubador
A Field Review of NL 8x32
2 3
Replies
43
Views
13K
Ravis
Ravis
B
Curio 7x21 v Uvid 8x20 personal review
2 3
Replies
48
Views
11K
PW42
P
David Smith
A couple "firewall" questions e.g. what is one ??
Replies
18
Views
2K
Andy Adcock
Andy Adcock
Steve C
Review: Opticron Verano 8x32
2 3
Replies
48
Views
11K
lmans66
lmans66

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top