Norton anti-virus - switching it off

[gevers1]

Hi, long time no see! I got a scare when I tried to connect to the site using my old bookmarks only to find the page gone!

A question about Norton AV. I see a lot of posts around the various FS9 forums saying that you shouldn't have Norton AV (or indeed any AV, but particularly Norton) running when you run FS9 as it affects the performance. All very well, but at the risk of stating the bleedin' obvious, doesn't turning off your AV expose you to all the evils of the internet?

When I look at my Norton installation, I've got Internet Security (which i guess is the firewall) and Anti Virus. I take it I just switch off the AV and leave the firewall up? Right?

[TSR2]

The posts arround Norton stem from the fact that it is an appauling product, not just with FS.

All Virus scanners use resource (quite a lot in some cases), but the simplest way is probably to exclude your FS foldesr (and sub folders) from real time scanning.

I wouldn't disable virus scanning unless your machine is disconnected from the internet.

I would recomment you get a better AV program.

[gevers1]

Hi Ben, I've got the real time scanning switched off for my fs9 dirs already, so i guess that's covered. Aside from FS9, the various Norton programs take up the largest slices of ram, though CPU activity is 0%. I'd have thought though that switching off the AV but leaving the firewall on is safe, on the basis that if nothing is getting in, then there shouldn't be any problems ..

I'm stuck with Norton for a wee while yet (i paid for updates, subscribed till November next year and it's a shame to waste the money. I dont mind it as a tool, though I sometimes have my doubts how good it is. It's missed viruses that other freeware scanning tools detected. I've contacted norton about this, but no reply.

[Garry Russell]

Be very careful about saving money

I had Nortons a couple of years ago and the virus I got was so bad nothing then could get rid of it..not even reformatting as it was sitting in the reserve area for rebooting the drive

After the shop cleaned it three times at a cost of about £90 and continually reloading and reformatting I bought a new hard drive at another £80

I don't mean to say this could happen to you.....but to stick with a bad or ineffective AV to see out the paid period may not be the value it seems.

I am moving this to Developers corner/Hardware as it truly belong there and anything discussed could be useful for those browsing that section for answers


ATB

Garry

[Nigel Edwards]

I sat through a security lecture at work a while back and the experts recommended AVG. I gave it a go and have never looked back. Simply beats the spots off N****n imho. The amount of system resources freed up was amazing and it actually does a better job.

Best wishes

Nige

[Charlie Bravo]

AVG is an awful program. I've had the pleasure of sorting a friends PC out that had caught some nasties that AVG let through it's net.

I was using NOD32 but as I can't be arsed to pay for anti virus software I now use AOL Active Virus Shield. It hasn't got any AOL "extras" with it, it's just got the branding. The program itself it essentially Kaspersky v6 and all of the updates are downloaded from the Kaspersky server.

[Garry Russell]

Hi CB

I was just trying to download the AOL programme but it is no longer available :-(

Garry

[DanKH]

Who is this "Charlie Bravo" ....




Haven't "seen" you around for a long time!

[petermcleland]

I have removed Nortons from both my wife's laptops and I discovered that you need to have it FULLY activated in order to properly uninstall it. In one case I had some part disabled and things got left behind and caused a lot of trouble...I finally got round this by completely RE-INSTALLING it and then immediately UN-INSTALLED it again. This time it all came out and all was well.

All our machines now use AVAST and we have absolutely no complaints with it