why does Norton scan every file?

[email.joanne]

I just installed Norton Internet Security 2006 on a new computer. It
is scanning every single file I open (word, visio, excel, etc.). It's
killing my productivity, as it takes several seconds for each file to
open. I've tried customizing the Auto Protect feature to exclude
common MS file extensions, but that didn't work. I've even tried
turning Auto Protect off, and that STILL didn't work.

Each time I open a file (regardless of whether it's from an email or
sitting on my hard drive), I see the message in the lower left corner
of the app window "Running virus scan..."

As far as I can tell, I have no other virus scanning software on my
computer. Does anyone have any ideas as to what's going on and what I
can do to stop the madness?

Thanks in advance,

JW

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: <[email protected]>

| I just installed Norton Internet Security 2006 on a new computer. It
| is scanning every single file I open (word, visio, excel, etc.). It's
| killing my productivity, as it takes several seconds for each file to
| open. I've tried customizing the Auto Protect feature to exclude
| common MS file extensions, but that didn't work. I've even tried
| turning Auto Protect off, and that STILL didn't work.
|
| Each time I open a file (regardless of whether it's from an email or
| sitting on my hard drive), I see the message in the lower left corner
| of the app window "Running virus scan..."
|
| As far as I can tell, I have no other virus scanning software on my
| computer. Does anyone have any ideas as to what's going on and what I
| can do to stop the madness?
|
| Thanks in advance,
|
| JW

Becuase that's the best way to protect the PC. Scan all file types regardless of their
extension.

 

[Phil Weldon]

'JW' wrote, in part:
| I just installed Norton Internet Security 2006 on a new computer. It
| is scanning every single file I open (word, visio, excel, etc.). It's
| killing my productivity, as it takes several seconds for each file to
| open. I've tried customizing the Auto Protect feature to exclude
| common MS file extensions, but that didn't work. I've even tried
| turning Auto Protect off, and that STILL didn't work.

As David says, scanning each file upon opening it is the best protection.
The question you should ask is "why is the delay noticeable on your system?"
There may be a problem with your system.

Specific details would help in diagnosis.
* CPU, model and speed
* amount of installed memory
* program name and versions that you use

There really shouldn't be a noticeable delay in scanning a file for MS Word
or any other Office application.
Norton Antivirus has plug-ins for MS Word and other MS Office applications
that block macro viruses when a document is opened. That is evidently the
source of the message you see with a MS Office application, and why you
don't see it with other applications.

Just checking with my system with Norton Antivirus, opening a 350 KByte Word
document takes less than a second, and the 'requesting virus scan' appears
for less than a quarter second.

Phil Weldon


|I just installed Norton Internet Security 2006 on a new computer. It
| is scanning every single file I open (word, visio, excel, etc.). It's
| killing my productivity, as it takes several seconds for each file to
| open. I've tried customizing the Auto Protect feature to exclude
| common MS file extensions, but that didn't work. I've even tried
| turning Auto Protect off, and that STILL didn't work.
|
| Each time I open a file (regardless of whether it's from an email or
| sitting on my hard drive), I see the message in the lower left corner
| of the app window "Running virus scan..."
|
| As far as I can tell, I have no other virus scanning software on my
| computer. Does anyone have any ideas as to what's going on and what I
| can do to stop the madness?
|
| Thanks in advance,
|
| JW
|

 

[email.joanne]

Hi Phil,

It took 5 seconds to open a 16 KB excel file and 8 seconds to open a 1
MB word file. This seems excessive.

I have a new Sony Vaio with the Centrino Duo processor, 1 GB of RAM and
100 GB of memory. I'm running MS Office 2003 Pro.

Any thoughts?

JW

 

[VTJim]

I just installed Norton Internet Security 2006 on a new computer. It
is scanning every single file I open (word, visio, excel, etc.). It's
killing my productivity, as it takes several seconds for each file to
open. I've tried customizing the Auto Protect feature to exclude
common MS file extensions, but that didn't work. I've even tried
turning Auto Protect off, and that STILL didn't work.

Each time I open a file (regardless of whether it's from an email or
sitting on my hard drive), I see the message in the lower left corner
of the app window "Running virus scan..."

As far as I can tell, I have no other virus scanning software on my
computer. Does anyone have any ideas as to what's going on and what I
can do to stop the madness?

If it is Norton 2006, I think it will check on almost everything you
do.
I was helping a friend with her computer and found that Norton
seemed to kick in like this on almost every click to open anything. I
could not find a setting to turn of this amount of checking. With 128MB
on the box running XP, it slowed things to less then a crawl.

After checking the computer with multiple nasty finders(Spybot S&D,
AdAware, Norton virus scan, CWShedder, Hijackthis, Ewido, both in
regular and safe mode) and finding nothing, I uninstalled Norton AV 2006
also cleaning every iota of Symantec, Norton, from the registry(I
think). The computer seemed to now perform quite nicely off line.
Certainly no speed demon, but no big hesitations which were there
before, even if not surfing. I installed NortonAV2003(She likes/trusts
Norton), and she can surf with what I would consider normal speed for
cable.(Not fast enough for my tastes though)

I have since installed another 526M RAM, and the box is plenty fast
even when surfing. Just my gut feel(I'm no expert) but I think Norton
2006 seemed to be over the top with "protection". Maybe I missed
something in the preferences, but I also found no way to turn off some
of the stuff.

 

[Phil Weldon]

'JW' wrote:
| It took 5 seconds to open a 16 KB excel file and 8 seconds to open a 1
| MB word file. This seems excessive.

Five seconds is excessive to open a 16 KB MS Excel file and 8 seconds is
excessive to open a 1 MB MS Word file.

* I have a new Sony Viao with a Pentium M 1.86 GHz CPU, 512 MBytes DDR2 RAM,
and a 100 GByte capacity hard drive.

With MS Office 2003, and Norton Antivirus 2005, Word opens a 2.8 MByte .doc
file in less than a second; with the 'requesting virus scan' appearing for
less than a half second. And this is while a 3 MByte Adobe Acrobat file is
open and Windows Media Player is playing a .wma file.

I have some ideas, but most of them will direct you to another newsgroup.

Pretty clearly you have a brand-new notebook computer, and have antivirus
protection. What you may also have is a bunch of trialware and other stuff
loaded on your hard drive by Sony. I've had my new notebook for only 4
days, and am still expunging the trialware and other stuff I don't need or
want. Some of the things I DO want don't seem to work.

If you experience long load times for files other than those for MS Office
files you should try the newsgroup microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics with a
subject line like 'Excessive time to load files'.

Also try Microsoft Knowledge Base articles using perhaps the same phrase as
above along with 'Word'.

Finally, you could try Symantec customer support.

My guess is that even if you disable the Office plug-in for Norton Antivirus
you will still have excessive file load times. The probable cause is not
virus scanning, but rather misconfiguration of your system or MS Office, or
Sony loaded 'junk ware.'

As you can see from my load time above, scanning every file on use has
negligible effect on productivity type applications.

Phil Weldon

| Hi Phil,
|
| It took 5 seconds to open a 16 KB excel file and 8 seconds to open a 1
| MB word file. This seems excessive.
|
| I have a new Sony Vaio with the Centrino Duo processor, 1 GB of RAM and
| 100 GB of memory. I'm running MS Office 2003 Pro.
|
| Any thoughts?
|
| JW
|
| Phil Weldon wrote:
| > 'JW' wrote, in part:
| > | I just installed Norton Internet Security 2006 on a new computer. It
| > | is scanning every single file I open (word, visio, excel, etc.). It's
| > | killing my productivity, as it takes several seconds for each file to
| > | open. I've tried customizing the Auto Protect feature to exclude
| > | common MS file extensions, but that didn't work. I've even tried
| > | turning Auto Protect off, and that STILL didn't work.
| >
| > As David says, scanning each file upon opening it is the best
protection.
| > The question you should ask is "why is the delay noticeable on your
system?"
| > There may be a problem with your system.
| >
| > Specific details would help in diagnosis.
| > * CPU, model and speed
| > * amount of installed memory
| > * program name and versions that you use
| >
| > There really shouldn't be a noticeable delay in scanning a file for MS
Word
| > or any other Office application.
| > Norton Antivirus has plug-ins for MS Word and other MS Office
applications
| > that block macro viruses when a document is opened. That is evidently
the
| > source of the message you see with a MS Office application, and why you
| > don't see it with other applications.
| >
| > Just checking with my system with Norton Antivirus, opening a 350 KByte
Word
| > document takes less than a second, and the 'requesting virus scan'
appears
| > for less than a quarter second.
| >
| > Phil Weldon
|

 

[Gaz]

I just installed Norton Internet Security 2006 on a new computer. It
is scanning every single file I open (word, visio, excel, etc.). It's
killing my productivity, as it takes several seconds for each file to
open. I've tried customizing the Auto Protect feature to exclude
common MS file extensions, but that didn't work. I've even tried
turning Auto Protect off, and that STILL didn't work.

Each time I open a file (regardless of whether it's from an email or
sitting on my hard drive), I see the message in the lower left corner
of the app window "Running virus scan..."

As far as I can tell, I have no other virus scanning software on my
computer. Does anyone have any ideas as to what's going on and what I
can do to stop the madness?

Thanks in advance,

JW

Two options, disable the 'office plugin' in the nis options, that will solve
the problem, a better solution however would be to take off NIS and use an
alternative less intrusive anti virus.

Gaz

 

[email.joanne]

Thank you! That did the trick...

Two options, disable the 'office plugin' in the nis options, that will solve
the problem, a better solution however would be to take off NIS and use an
alternative less intrusive anti virus.

Gaz