Required Windows services for Norton AntiVirus?

[Chris]

I run performance-sensitive software on my machine, and can't afford to have
any unnecessary Windows services chewing up memory or processor cycles in
the background. When I installed Norton AntiVirus, it installed half a dozen
of them. I opened up Options and turned everything off, and was seriously
irritated that it left most of the services running.

I'll avoid a rant here about here about bloatware and arrogant companies who
think they own my system...

In any case, I shut down all of the services, and now when I try to run it
to do a scan, it (Norton) locks up. The initial screen never gets fully
painted. It actually worked when I did this with an earlier version of
Norton, but apparently AntiVirus 2005 works differently.

So the plan is this: turn on the dead minimum number of services I need to
run a scan, and then shut them down again. Question is, what services are
required?

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Chris" <anon>

| I run performance-sensitive software on my machine, and can't afford to have
| any unnecessary Windows services chewing up memory or processor cycles in
| the background. When I installed Norton AntiVirus, it installed half a dozen
| of them. I opened up Options and turned everything off, and was seriously
| irritated that it left most of the services running.
|
| I'll avoid a rant here about here about bloatware and arrogant companies who
| think they own my system...
|
| In any case, I shut down all of the services, and now when I try to run it
| to do a scan, it (Norton) locks up. The initial screen never gets fully
| painted. It actually worked when I did this with an earlier version of
| Norton, but apparently AntiVirus 2005 works differently.
|
| So the plan is this: turn on the dead minimum number of services I need to
| run a scan, and then shut them down again. Question is, what services are
| required?
|


If you "...can't afford to have any unnecessary Windows services chewing up memory or
processor cycles in the background." Then Norton is NOT the software you want. I suggest
removing it and replacing it with something else like NOD32.

 

[Steve Pope]

If you "...can't afford to have any unnecessary Windows
services chewing up memory or processor cycles in the
background." Then Norton is NOT the software you want. I suggest
removing it and replacing it with something else like NOD32.

Shouldn't it be possible to have two computers booted off
one shared disk drive, and use one computer to run Norton
scannign the drive and the second computer to run everything else
you need?

(Just thinking out loud, ignore me...)

Steve

 

[Chris]

If you "...can't afford to have any unnecessary Windows

Shouldn't it be possible to have two computers booted off
one shared disk drive, and use one computer to run Norton
scannign the drive and the second computer to run everything else
you need?

(Just thinking out loud, ignore me...)

That's not a bad idea -- we could use it to scan a mapped drive. It might
not handle the registry and other things correctly, though. I'd rather have
something clean and simple that I can run on this machine.

 

[Chris]

If you "...can't afford to have any unnecessary Windows services chewing
up memory or
processor cycles in the background." Then Norton is NOT the software you
want. I suggest
removing it and replacing it with something else like NOD32.

Very interesting. I had not heard of NOD32. They seem to be saying all the
right things on their site. I found an old review, though, that said that
configuration was time-consuming and complicated. Time is another thing in
short supply... Have they improved in that regard?

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Chris" <anon>


| Very interesting. I had not heard of NOD32. They seem to be saying all the
| right things on their site. I found an old review, though, that said that
| configuration was time-consuming and complicated. Time is another thing in
| short supply... Have they improved in that regard?
|

That I can't say for sure but once it is configured that's it so the time spent should be a
one time deal.

 

[Todd H.]

Shouldn't it be possible to have two computers booted off
one shared disk drive, and use one computer to run Norton
scannign the drive and the second computer to run everything else
you need?

(Just thinking out loud, ignore me...)

It's a great idea in theory certainly.

However, the first trouble is hardware support for this sort of
concurrent access implemeted as you describe. Consumers haven't shown
themselves willing to pay for it. IDE and SATA don't support more
than one controller on a given bus connection.

Then, from the OS side of the equation, there's the issue of what to
do with the virus when it's found-- you can't have two machines trying
to modify the same hard disk volume without doing a lot of careful OS
and controller work on both sides with semaphores and write locks,
etc. For instance, windows really wouldn't like a 2nd machine
changing a bit of the registry out from under it if a virus were
found.

On a shared network drive, however, this sort of offline scanning and
detection would certainly be possible, even today. But the trick is
"once detected, what action do you want the offline scanner to tkae?"
That's where care must be taken so as not to break the machine that's
being scanned.

Best Regards,