antivirus turned off at startup

[Guest]

sometimes when i turn my computer on, the shield icon in the taskbar is red
(instead of yellow) and a balloon pops up saying "your computer may be at
risk" and that norton antivirus is off. i never turn it off - is there some
way to tell my computer not to turn it off. i don't know if this happens
after updates or what conditions it, but it's not every time.
any suggestions?
thanks.

 

[Richard in AZ]

Does the message go away after a bit if you do nothing?
It may simply be that Windows checks for the antivirus before the antivirus get a chance to load.
By the By, Norton Antivirus is very slow to load.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the suggestion - this sounded plausible, so I watched for it and
it does seem like I only get that message if I'm right there while the
computer is warming up. My computer *really* slow starting up lately, maybe
because I'm storing a lot of PDFs the last couple of months?

So if it's just because it's slow to start up, does that mean there's no
actual risk, or does my automatic wireless connection kick in first and
expose me to whatever's out there in the first coupld of minutes?

 

[Richard in AZ]

You would have to watch your internet connection lights (the flashing computer icons in the System
Tray) to see if they are communicating with the internet before the antivirus program loads. I
suspect not.
You might want to consider dumping Norton for a faster antivirus program (almost any other antivirus
software, except McAfee).

 

[Guest]

I hope you can help again with the antivirus problem. This time I htink it
might just be communication between the software and windows security alerts,
but I want to be sure.
I was having trouble with my printer and followed the suggestion to
uninstall/resinstall the drivers (which didn't help at all btw). Somewhere in
the process it said to temporarily disable the antivirus protection - the
only thing i could find was "unload service" which seemed to work, but now I
get that security alert all the time , at startup and after, and with the red
icon in the taskbar that doesn't go away. If I look at the windows security
center it says virus protection is reporting that it's off, even if symantec
says it's on. Something seems to have changed with the startup values, but I
have no idea how to get there.
any ideas? i'm definitely in over my head now.