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Post by irvsp on Nov 29, 2013 16:17:00 GMT
Although I'm not a real 'lover' of Norton, I think it does a better job overall than others and I believe 'fee' based protection is better/faster than 'free' based protection. First, I normally 'buy' the Norton ISS on Black Friday (US Friday after US Thanksgiving Thursday or CyberMonday) for $10 or less after rebates. This year, none seems to be available, but Norton 360 was for US $25. So we bought it on an Amazon Special for $19.99 USD and no rebates to mess with. Now have another year's license for 3 PC's. Still 'cheap' (others like Kaspersky was 'free' this year as is McAfee's Total Protection but we prefer to stay with Norton) I guess. OK, now the 'bad' part. A few days ago I notice on the tower the disk light is flickering? Hmm, I'm NOT doing anything, but I do know that Norton runs a scan when machine idle. Didn't think much of it. Well, starting a few days ago when I clicked on an icon it didn't seem to take, nothing happened. Sometimes the icon took a LONG time to start the app when I clicked on it. A few times it seemed as if the computer was completely locked up. This happened 4 times in the last few weeks. It seemed I had no mouse or keyboard as they are connected via Bluetooth. Powering off and on fixed that. Not convinced at this time if the keyboard/mouse is related, and these too started recently since I upgraded to W8.1 I looked at the HD activity further and it seems that Norton was hogging the machine, high disk access, over 50% usage, and high 20% or so CPU usage. Now I never ever KNEW Norton was running. Something was wrong for sure. Sure enough, I'm not the only one that discovered this, SEE HERE for details. OK, I did the suggested 'fix' until Norton fixes the problem (which they appear to not have confirmed as real and working). Guess what, that 'fix' causes a dialog box when programs try to access the Internet and not on a white list AND when you shutdown, another NSE crash dialog box and the need to dismiss the dialog box to complete shutdown. Of course, I'm used to clicking SHUTDOWN, turning off the monitor, and walking away. Next morning it is STILL on, sigh...
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Post by warlock on Nov 29, 2013 16:33:49 GMT
Hi Irv. Haven't used a Norton product sine W98 days. I always thought it was a hog, tried to overtake the machine too. Only feature I found useful and that was back then, was Goback.
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Post by irvsp on Nov 29, 2013 19:17:51 GMT
GoBack had many iterations, now basically it is Symantec System Restore 2014. As products age, it seems they tend to just move on, different program rather than a new version. I went from GoBack to Save and Restore, to probably a few versions of Norton Ghost, and now SSR 2014. It was getting to be annoying (and still is) that when MS released a new OS version, a new version of the back-up program was needed. They never seemed to release and update to the older one. One of the reasons I think they sunset the Ghost brand. SSR however comes in a few versions, Server and Client. Maybe they'll keep this one updated.
Norton (Symantec) really surprises me, they are MS 'partners' and it seems EVERY TIME MS releases the final version Symantec needs to do something because their products DO NOT FULLY WORK once the true release is released. It worked OK actually for W8, but you COULD NOT REGISTER the product, only use it as a 'demo' for 30 days... huh... had to install it twice and Symantec finally gave up trying to 'fix' it and brought out SSR 2014 that DOES work to replace it (at a cost).
ISS 2014, besides what I've just posted a link for, when W8.1 arrived the Norton Toolbar (part of the ISS) did NOT work...
I don't know if this is MS 'playing games' and breaking products or Symantec NOT testing the products fully on the release version they SHOULD have access too?
As for older products run on older OS's like you had experienced, a lot depended on your h/w and how many options you enabled. State of the art systems at that time of release worked OK, older h/w, not so much.
When I moved here in 2002, and went to our community computer club, people knew I had a computer background and asked what would work for A/V on their h/w. I asked what they had and made a suggestion and how to configure it. Well, one was to buy the latest Norton A/V, and one guy told the person that for $10 (Norton cost $40 then) one could go across the street to Office Depot and get a 2 year old version. Told the person that would not be smart. Although the signatures would be update, the s/w was old and outdated and might be slow. Person got the $10 copy and then complained his system hardly ran. What can I say? Got the latest and although it still was a 'load' on his computer, it did work much better.
There is an old adage, something like s/w will try to use all the h/w and RAM given a chance. With today's multi-tasking large RAM systems there is no one that takes the time to optimize and trim the size of executables. It is left to the compiler to do that. Shame.
Norton Ghost 15 was killed by W8, but they (Symantec and MS) claimed it DID work. Sure
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Post by warlock on Nov 29, 2013 23:11:12 GMT
Irv, don't claim to be the best computer literate person here, far from it but, have been using SAS, Malwarebytes, AVG free, Ccleaner, and Macrium. and that's for years. All good here and no money spent. It's just me. Do not have W8.1 here, so might be a problem, I don't know.
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Post by irvsp on Nov 30, 2013 1:15:50 GMT
I can't be sure it IS 8.1. A lot of people seem to think it is though. Worked on W8, not W8.1 seems to be a common thread.
As far as 'free vs. fee', well, the truth is someone has to pay for something, one way or the other. To me, it is all about protection, and I mean who ships the protection to me the fastest. Some 'free' product do not update frequently or automatically.
Heck, $20 to protect 3PC's is a fair price.
I am not being fooled by hyperbole either. Almost everyone will say what they have works best (or you wouldn't use it). However, once they get infected, well, it isn't good anymore. Best protection is from you and your d/w and browsing, as well as opening e-mail attachments. Not complete protection, but it is a good head start.
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Post by Lighthouse on Dec 2, 2013 9:27:51 GMT
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Post by irvsp on Dec 2, 2013 19:02:32 GMT
LH, I don't need any version info? In the Symantec forum's it is being suggested that this is a 'corrupted install' possibly. I know I installed W8.1 on 10/18, and that is about the same time my problems appeared to have started. Also about the time Norton put out an update, and that one appears to cause heavy HD I/O for some (and me). Suggestion of course is to use the Norton Removal Tool, but that will clean out the other Norton app I have. So it was suggested I use ADD/REMOVE, reboot twice, and then reinstall. I might just do that, but I'll loose settings, sigh... I've made the 'fix' to stop the hd I/O load and that seems to be OK, so I might not do anything? Depends how I feel I guess?
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Post by Lighthouse on Dec 2, 2013 23:11:18 GMT
Irv, you said "I can't be sure it IS 8.1. A lot of people seem to think it is though. Worked on W8, not W8.1 seems to be a common thread."
Maybe I misunderstood.
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Post by irvsp on Dec 3, 2013 12:20:03 GMT
Irv, you said "I can't be sure it IS 8.1. A lot of people seem to think it is though. Worked on W8, not W8.1 seems to be a common thread." Maybe I misunderstood. Yeah, maybe I didn't state it clear enough either. I meant the Norton problem might be due to W8.1.
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Post by Admin_Vistamike on Dec 3, 2013 12:30:21 GMT
A pal of mine mentions he had odd problems after the 8.1 upgrade. Running a scan slowed his system nearly to a halt.
He did use the Norton tool to uninstall.
Reinstall appears to have solved the problem.
I will be looking at a similar problem later with Kaspersky IS 2014
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Post by irvsp on Dec 3, 2013 18:10:00 GMT
A pal of mine mentions he had odd problems after the 8.1 upgrade. Running a scan slowed his system nearly to a halt. He did use the Norton tool to uninstall. Reinstall appears to have solved the problem. I will be looking at a similar problem later with Kaspersky IS 2014 It will PROBABLY be back... see LINK, as once you re-install the NEXT update brings in the problem.... after a reboot at least after you get the 'patch'. That is basically part of my problem.
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Post by warlock on Dec 5, 2013 0:40:53 GMT
I can't be sure it IS 8.1. A lot of people seem to think it is though. Worked on W8, not W8.1 seems to be a common thread. As far as 'free vs. fee', well, the truth is someone has to pay for something, one way or the other. To me, it is all about protection, and I mean who ships the protection to me the fastest. Some 'free' product do not update frequently or automatically. Heck, $20 to protect 3PC's is a fair price. I am not being fooled by hyperbole either. Almost everyone will say what they have works best (or you wouldn't use it). However, once they get infected, well, it isn't good anymore. Best protection is from you and your d/w and browsing, as well as opening e-mail attachments. Not complete protection, but it is a good head start. While what you say here is true , to a point. The $20 seems like a great deal till you spend hours making it work properly. Hope you do get it sorted though.
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Post by irvsp on Dec 5, 2013 1:01:57 GMT
Oh, let me tell you, NIS 2014 newly installed AFTER it was deleted and 'saving' old settings (a choice on the uninstall if you should want to reinstall NIS) took this machine to ITS knees!!!
Problem was easy to figure out though, at least by me?
What had happened the computer was totally unresponsive on this morning's boot. First time after the initial install reboot that I booted the system.
I was getting some pop-ups for 'items' trying to access the Internet. Well, I guess I didn't answer some fast enough? So the 'item' sat waiting for me to OK it. This was due to a setting change for the high HD I/O problem.
What had happened was the DATA of which apps to allow access to was DELETED on the uninstall. Was NOT clear what would be deleted, but this is NOT a setting but DATA. I guess I was sort of warned as the quarantine would be deleted.
Anyway, once I was able to open the PERFORMANCE tab on NIS I saw the high disk usage for NIS and then I put it together with the requests for Internet access and changed the ONE setting, POOF, system returned to normal. I'll live with the high HD I/O for awhile until most of my programs are run and then enable the 'ask for access' option.
What is hard to figure out is the disk access is around 14% which should NOT bog this system down. However, with almost 2TB's on the system, I bet (it does show individual drives) most of that is on my 128GB SSD, and that is why I can start anything, the OS is there and it can't get in.
I did do some SCAN ignore settings, my old C:, now X:, never used, D: which is Dell's recover drive (Vista no less) which can't even be used now, and some folders like my 730GB Ghost backup folder. Reduced the Full System scan from 3 1/2 hours to 1 1/3 hour. I never KNEW it was scanning either!
All appears to be well, but I still can't figure out if I had a problem or not or even a corrupted install?
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Post by warlock on Dec 5, 2013 1:08:23 GMT
Seems you got it somewhat okay now, hope Vista mike chimes in with his Kaspersky check.
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Post by irvsp on Dec 6, 2013 12:42:49 GMT
Norton can STILL cause problems for people. Yesterday a friend called. Booted the system and saw a message from Norton ISS that they were NOT protected as an update failed. They need to uninstall the ISS and reinstall it. Panicked, and called me. I used TeamViewer to connect but she had dismissed the dialog box already. I tried starting the ISS and nothing happened? It wasn't running either. So I got down the installer and deleted the ISS. On her desktop is the INSTALL ISS folder, opened it and tried the installer from that. It installed and then had to reboot and my connection was lost. When it came up it said that her license had expired? I noticed when being installed it said 2012. She had been renewing it all along, last renew was last August. Since it was thinking the license was over 600 days old, it seems it shut-off some stuff and TV could not connect. She said an 800# was displayed. I told her to call it but if it was going to cost money, call me back, I'm sure I can fix it as I had seen a few NORTON folders and one clearly for 2014 on her computer.
She called the number and it was in India of course but it was free as it was a special number of failed installs. She said the woman could connect to her and said she had to entirely remove Norton and deleted some of the old install folders. The d/l'ed a file to her and ran it. Working fine now.
Not too sure what was done but I suspect the clean tool was used and then the install worked fine. I didn't want to try the tool as my friend didn't know the license number and since I couldn't open the ISS I couldn't see it. Maybe I could have if I looked in the Norton on-line account, but I didn't think of that? All ended well.
It appears patch failing is a common problem with the ISS lately? Who knows, but at least Norton was able to fix it free. That is a good thing.
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