Is There Anybody Out There?...with Norton Experience??

Hello....I opened a thread because I could not find one that was similar....(yeah....searched....yeah)....

ANYWAY.....what I just did was (finally) figure out how to uninstall the Symantic (Norton) AV program...had to go to Symantic's website to do it.....sucks, because I tried so often from Windows Control Panel "Add/Remove" Utility....

....so....it's done (finally).

Norton (as Symantec) was 'mucking up' MANY of my operations....to include (don't laugh) Word Office Pro 2000....took over FIVE minutes for Word to open.....until I got rid of Norton (Symantics)).

Here's the deal.....I bought Norton WAY back in 2005......AND unintsalled it yesterday...(still need to De-Frag the C: Drive)......I run Windows XP still.....and it has served me well (so far)....here's the question:

WHAT is, from ATS members' experience, a good AV program?? I have MCaFee (I think, running in the background)...and of course, Windows XP "FireWall" utility.....

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.....free, if possible....(Though, $20 per year, I could live with...)

Thanks in advance.

Oh.....and for those interested? Hack away! ! ......(Just kidding.....)....

Best to all....cheers for 20121111

(SECOND QUESTION....BONUS POINTS]:

For some reason, along the line, my Hard-Drive is Partitioned.....C: and D:.....ALL my "system" stuff is on the C: partition....but, I have HALF of a hard-drive ("D:") that is virtually...well, not virtually is really empty, and un usable...what did I do???

Thanks (doubly) in advance.......I kiss you all (virtually) after your replies....really.....I will stop now.....I will trade "kisses" for "virtual hugs"....OK??

reply to post by ProudBird


You could try Microsoft Security Essentials.

Highly rated, small footprint & free (for Windows machines, but not for servers).

Ensure you get it from a legitimate Microsoft website. There's too many malwares out there designed to look like it.

I use Avast...and I gotta say it's been pretty reliable.On top of that I also use Zone Alarm.Both free.Plus maleware bytes.I say give all three a shot

Avast. It's free and very good. Just need to supply an email addy for a one year licence.
Norton is garbage.

Originally posted by nightstalker78
I use Avast...and I gotta say it's been pretty reliable.On top of that I also use Zone Alarm.Both free.Plus maleware bytes.I say give all three a shot

Yep, same here.

dont care for norton, i run avast and it works really well.

lol 4 avast post right in a row! is that telling you any thing? drop norton its a waist of money and use the free avast or spend a lil bit on there and get even more protection from avast.

reply to post by chr0naut


Thanks:

You could try Microsoft Security Essentials.

Is that available in Win XP? If so....where?

reply to post by nightstalker78


THANKS>...to you and a few below...."avast"....I will give it a "Bing"! (LOL)....or a "Google"....whichever.....maybe will "Ask Jeeves"....(gosh, I am THAT old...)..... ( LOL )......

THANKS all......

NOD32 is a very good anti-virus program that is one of the hardest for virus makers to beat. Its 'heuristic engine' scans programs in a slightly different way than most other anti-virus programs. It can usually sniff out a virus / trojan even if it has been hand altered with a hex editor to change its known digital footprint or even ecrypted. I spent some time learning how to program and encrypt trojans etc in an attempt to better understand how to provide support in getting rid of them off peoples systems and NOD32 is very hard to fool. Its also very light on the system so you hardly know its even there.

Here is some proof by way of a post from a 'security research' forum :

hello..
nod32(eset) has a very advanced heuristic engine(emulation,unpacking).
I want to know how to trick and bypass this heuristic detection.
I tried dynamic dll link and API encryption(using some different kinds of encryption algorism). I also tried cryption and modification using debugger.
but both of them didin't do the work.

Does anyone know how to bypass this heuristic detection?
Please help me....

Source

As you can see NOD32 is a seriously good option

One thing to remember about anti-virus programs is that when a person who is making virus's / trojans tests their stuff before sending it out into the 'wild' they will always try to be able to beat at least the top 5 most popular anti-virus programs at the time. So sometime the most popular is not the safest.

Malwarebytes and adaware are both very good free options.

Also i highly recommend learning how to use 'hijackthis' which is a program that can be used to manually identify and strip out browser infections.

MSE is very good I run it in conjunction with avast and threatfire. If you are serious about staying away from infections you should come off of XP and migrate to 7. If you really really want to stay away from infections and you mostly use the computer for office apps and the internet try Debian Linux or another 'friendly' linux distro.

reply to post by ProudBird


you for got about lycos, let the dog fetch it!

when i first got my computer it was messing up cus of norton so made the switch

I've run ClamWin since I bought my Win 7 Asus laptop almost a year ago. Been flawless so far and is free

I personally suggest AVG,
Its not as finicky as Avast,
And anything is better than norton.

ZoneAlarm is a good firewall as well,


AVG Coupled with Spybot Search and Destroy and Malwarebytes should be fine to remove all viruses/malware/adware.

Oh and if you install a new OS, you'll need to backup data before doing it. I can't remember if XP will let you delete the unwanted partition and add it to your C partition. You can then reformat your hard drive and delete the two partitions and create a new partition that uses all the space. You could also leave a portion of the space unpartitioned, or short stacked, and see a small speed increase.

I got Norton in 2002. I got rid of it in 2003 after i got infected with a virus that took down my entire system over a two month period. It finally deleted norton and it's antivirus files just before it went onto my cmos chip and nuced my motherboard.
After getting a new board I reinstalled norton and then took a look at the files in the fresh install. Norton had files buried all over the new system and allot of them were empty. All were labeled either norton or symantecs. The darn program used so many resources that my machine slowed to a crawl.

Previously I had used AVG free version and had never had a problem. I uninstalled norton and reinstalled AVG. I have used AVG ever since and have never had another problem. Can't beat free when it works this well. As some one else said Avast is a good one too, my girlfriend uses it and has had no problems.

By the way after uninstalling norton I was deleting empty files from that crap program for two years. They were everywhere.

I like AVG as well, it used to be better but they bloated it up a lot over the last few years. I highly recommend running two AV's. Not all AV is created equal, its best to run two so if something slips by one the other might still pick it up... none of them are perfect. Clam is a good 2nd AV its swift and lightweight. Panda is another choice as well.

I have seen a few replies....is there a consensus??

Thanks again, in advance.

ETA....I'm a techie idiot when it comes to MS [I mean MS-DOS based Windows platforms....I know that UNIX and MAC exist...and I have NO experience with them, AT ALL...so....just sayin'... Ask me how to fly an airplane?? And I will happily share with you.......for free!!]

.I know just enough to get me into trouble, if you know what I mean......when it comes to MS....


U2U me for more.....( ).........if warranted........

Man! You Windows people sure have a lot of trouble with viruses! I did too, a long time ago. Then I discovered a totally free operating system that don't get a virus. Linux. Great firewall, encrypted, and proxyed IP.

Good advice above me on antivirus/antimalware stuff, so I won't address that. As far as the partitioning of your drive, though, here are a couple of ideas. I often partition users' drives at my job and put backups on the D: drive.

What I mean is that I use something like Acronis or Drive Image XML or Ghost (or one of many similar) to make an image of the C: drive. It's important to do it while it's clean and virus-free (and defragged, though that's not critical). What that does is set aside an exact image of your C: drive as it exists at the moment of backup; then, if you do have something happen--virus, crash, whatever--then you can restore the image in a matter of a few minutes, rather than spending days or weeks chasing viruses or swatting bugs or suffering crashes.

If you use "compression" during the backup it won't take up much space. You can use the rest of the space for extraneous backups of your documents. For example, you can put a copy of My Documents on the D: drive and use an "incremental" backup to keep your documents backed up and up-to-date in case of catastrophic loss. Depending on how much capacity the drive has, you can also put movies there to watch whenever you want; or tons of music, so that you can have it play in the background as you work.

Just some ideas....

Hello ProudBird,

As you can see, Most here recommend Avast or Nod32, both of which are very good and
freeware to boot,
Norton and McAffee are the worst two offenders...

Also Malwarebytes is a very handy tool,highly recommended...

As an aside regarding the removal of Norton Virus program, I have
found that even when you remove it it can leave a lot of remnants,
Exe's and phonehomers and stuff,

If you go to your start menu and hit "Search" and in the "All files and folders>
All or part of file name", type in ".exe", that will find every executable file there
is on your machine, There will be a lot of them and it may take a while but if you wait till
they finish and then trawl through them you will prolly find a lot of either Norton or Symantec
exe's and stuff,they will show up with a bright yellow icon beside them, You can then delete
them off and cleanse it fully from Norton.

Hope that helps some

Violet.