Why should I dump Norton AV?

[coolchinchilla]

I am running Norton Antivirus 2003. (Windows XP Home) I just got a new
custom built computer and since my original Norton was still valid, the
tech was able to extend my subscription until January 2006.

I've seen the discussions about which freeware AV is good so I'm not
asking about that. I've seen people say that Norton is bad. Why is it
bad? Any links?

Thanks in advance.
coolchinchilla

 

[anon]

I've seen the discussions about which freeware AV is good so I'm not
asking about that. I've seen people say that Norton is bad. Why is it
bad? Any links?

NAV is very, very slow and prone to false negatives. Some real world
testing of AV products over the past four years put NAV between 40%
and 60% reliable when detecting malicious content "in the wild". If you
want to go commercial then look at Nod32 (there is a trial, it is *fast*
and it does exactly what it says on the, er, tin), AVG is an alternative
and they offer a free edition for personal use. Avast! also offer a free
edition that is becoming quite popular. Of the two free offerings, AVG
is on par with Nod32.

 

[badgolferman]

Of the two

free offerings, AVG is on par with Nod32.

How did you come to this conclusion?

 

[anon]

How did you come to this conclusion?

Real world testing. (I work in the industry, I need to know
these things and, with a rack of sandboxed PCs infected with
every conceivable malicious manifestation, I get to examine a
hell of a lot of virus scanner logs.) Of the two, though, I'd
personally pick Nod32. It *is* fast, unobtrusive and throws
out fewer false negatives than any other. McAfee and NAV
have, as far as I'm concerned, lost the plot.

 

[anon]

How did you come to this conclusion?

Sorry to re-post, but I could kick myself for missing this
one out (which is odd, really, 'cos its log for today has
been staring me in the face all morning)... Kapersky.
Damn fine package. Damn fine. I'd still go with Nod32
though.

 

[Mel]

You shouldn't!

You should however round out your AV Protection by adding a second AV
Program, and unless money is no object, I'd opt for one of the freeware
ones that are available.

 

[Lew/+Silat]

You should however round out your AV Protection by adding a second AV
Program,

Wont this create a conflict. Im running F-prot now. You mean I could also
run AVG at the same time?

 

[Bjorn Simonsen]

Wont this create a conflict. Im running F-prot now. You mean I could also
run AVG at the same time?

No, but you could keep them both installed, and run a full scan with
each of them in turn. But never try to load both resident realtime
scanners at the same time, nor try to perform a "on-demand" scan with
both at the same time...only one at a time. Som AV clients will
happily coexist with other clients on the same system, (a few) others
not. I've used Free-AV and AVG and Norton side by side this way, as
long as I've just loaded one at the time (resident or on-demand
scanning). The only one I have seen complaining about finding another
scanner on my system, even if it was not resident, just residing on my
disk/recorded in systems registry and so on, was Normann AV (not
freeware)...

All the best,
Bjorn Simonsen

 

[owldo @ PAX]

Wont this create a conflict. Im running F-prot now. You mean I could also
run AVG at the same time?

I run AVG and Avast at the same time with no conflict on my machine.

ASUS CUSL2
WinXP Pro SP1
512MB RAM
Pentium III 866Mzh Coppermine

 

[elaich]

I run AVG and Avast at the same time with no conflict on my machine.

If you have to run 2 AV programs at the same time, obviously neither of
them is doing the job.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BBQ=AB?=]

I've seen the discussions about which freeware AV is good so I'm
not asking about that. I've seen people say that Norton is bad.
Why is it bad? Any links?

You'd get better advice in alt.comp.virus or alt.comp.anti-virus than
in there.

 

[Mel]

Wont this create a conflict. Im running F-prot now. You mean I could also
run AVG at the same time?

Been running NAV & AVG concurrently for over a year with no problems.
When NAV didn't detect a Virus I downloaded & installed AVG which
detected and removed the Virus. Overkill? Maybe, but no AV Program
catches everything. For emergency purposes keep an Emergency Boot Disk &
an updated copy of F-Prot (dos) available just in case.

 

[Mel]

Sorry to re-post, but I could kick myself for missing this
one out (which is odd, really, 'cos its log for today has
been staring me in the face all morning)... Kapersky.
Damn fine package. Damn fine. I'd still go with Nod32
though.

From what I've read elsewhere, if I was buying an AV
package my first choice would be Nod32, with Kaspersky
in second.

Having said that, if I already had a valid Norton licence,
I'd stick with that until it expired and back it up with
the occasional scan with a free on demand scanner
such as Antidote, which uses the excellent Kaspersky
engine. (No disinfect, but at least it should detect
most anything other AVs might miss).

http://www.vintage-solutions.com/English/Antivirus/Super/

However I'm no virus expert, I've never even had a
virus running on any of the computers I've owned, which
is why I use entirely freeware AV software rather than
paying for the best.


Mel (not the other Mel)

 

[Lew/+Silat]

Been running NAV & AVG concurrently for over a year with no problems.
When NAV didn't detect a Virus I downloaded & installed AVG which
detected and removed the Virus. Overkill? Maybe, but no AV Program
catches everything. For emergency purposes keep an Emergency Boot
Disk & an updated copy of F-Prot (dos) available just in case.

Mel you mean you have both running their respective behind the scenes
scanners at the same time?

 

[Gavrila Martau]

I had Norton AV during previous year, always up to date. I've got a
malware/virus that I couldn't remove because was not detected. I lived with
that virus for 6 month. I tried all scanner including Adaware and SpyBot.
They every time found something and removed but not the cause.
I installed a firewall to block some ports that the worm used to rebuild
itself every time after it was "removed".
In a day I installed AVG (was old version 6). After a minute it detected the
worm hidden in a dll attached to winlogon.exe (that dll file was not visible
in Explorer!! - and was not a hidden because of the hidden attribute). I
restarted and I never had that problem. I dumped Norton AV forever.
Also the speed of the computer increased twice when compiling (many file
accesses).

 

[John Ray]

coolchinchilla wrote:

(snip)

I've seen the discussions about which freeware AV is good so I'm not
asking about that. I've seen people say that Norton is bad. Why is it
bad? Any links?

I have used NAV for several years. Last week, for the second time in a
year, I received the message "NAV has encountered an internal error.
Please uninstall and reinstall NAV". Well, twice is one time too many
for me. Uninstalling deletes all your definitions, so you have to
download the updates all over again. I am now evaluating alternatives.

 

[Father Merrin]

John Ray formulated the question :

coolchinchilla wrote:

(snip)

I currently use both NAV and AVG, the next time I reload the OS I will
be running AVG only. NAV is bloatware, it consumes a ton of resources,
performs similar tasks as AVG and can be a nightmare to install. AVG
is free, resources are far fewer and new virus definitions are readily
available and updated. I have had very good results catching viruii
with AVG, like many of Symantec's products the quality and usability
has gone downhill and the costs have gone up. Even when you are able
to receive Symantec's products free through incentive offers the
headache you will experience while installing and maintaining it aren't
worth it.

My 2 cents,
FM

 

[B. Peg]

I agree. A co-worker's computer was struggling to stay alive and running
very, very slowly. Turns out the thing had Norton's version that came
loaded with the machine. As an experiment, I loaded the free AVG 6 version
(then) and it found over 700 (No kidding! We were all surprised by this!)
viruses that Norton didn't detect. Getting all the Norton stuff out of the
registry was also a pain. Couldn't install form the factory recovery disks
as it put the Norton stuff back on. I don't know, but I'm guessing since
Peter Norton got out of the company, the software has been patched and
re-written so many times it is unmanageable since their uninstaller cannot
remove all of it. The AVG product has been very good, so far, for me as
well.

B~

 

[Nobody]

No, but you could keep them both installed, and run a full scan with
each of them in turn. But never try to load both resident realtime
scanners at the same time, nor try to perform a "on-demand" scan with
both at the same time...only one at a time. Som AV clients will
happily coexist with other clients on the same system, (a few) others
not. I've used Free-AV and AVG and Norton side by side this way, as
long as I've just loaded one at the time (resident or on-demand
scanning). The only one I have seen complaining about finding another
scanner on my system, even if it was not resident, just residing on my
disk/recorded in systems registry and so on, was Normann AV (not
freeware)...

All the best,
Bjorn Simonsen

Or one could conclude that Norton AV doesn't detect anything... in the
background.

Trevor