Oh norton.. you used to be so good, what happened??

Fee · Sat 14/04/2007 08:02:35

MY BOYCOT OF SYMANTEC PRODUCTS!

Since the early days of my messing around woth PCs, when i owned an 8088 with 640k Ram, ive pretty much never gone without Norton Utilities installed. Every util came in handy at some stage or another and they never failed to do their jobs. For me, Norton Utils was one of the must have Applications for any PC user. Microsoft even made their own version of Speed Disk (Defrag) and Norton Disk Doctor (Scan Disk) and included it with DOS 6, maybe even DOS 5 i cant quiet remember, it was long ago

Norton Performed flawalessly untill around 1995 when the long filename system brought its popularity to a screaming halt untill the next version was released. I continued to use Nortons (Now Symantec) products with no problem. That was untill about 4 years ago. We were running a games server for a game called Helbreath. Making updates on a regular basis and having to compile and pack the client in such a way that hackers couldnt unpack it (well easily).

No sooner would i pack the client, NAV would report to me it was a virus and delete it. No matter what, with NAV 2003 there was no way to stop it from deleting a file i know for a fact isnt a virus. At this point i Stoped using Symantec products. Their quality seemed to be getting worse since Norton was sold to them and hell, there was other things avalible everywhere that did the same job.

Ever since ive used various differnt Antivirus and other utils by many other people / companies. 3 days ago just out of interest i decide to Run Symantecs online scan. 2 hrs later, it reports to me that i have 7 viruses. A fact i found strange since VET, AVG, Adaware and several other orpgrams failed to find them. 4 of them were packed Helbreath Clients ok easy enough, however 3 were reported as trojans.

Since im taking a nice long break from HB i thought screwit ill install full NAV 2007. I go and pay $90 for it and install it. Virus scan runs and guess what.. NO SIGN OF A VIRUS. Seems to me the online scan lied to me and i was duped into paying for NAV07.

Later that night u shutdown the PC. In the morning when i boot up, Norton springs to life and tells me "Koos.exe" is attempting to access the internet. I look in take manager, it doesnt exist. I search all files no sign of it. I google it and it informs me it is some sort of nasty ass Trojan so i set Norton to block it.

I attempt to browse the internet after i block it and guess what.. Norton cut off all internet access. I was unable to get it back. In hardware manager every network device had a yellow ! next to it as if the drivers are missing. So i set about reinstalling them. No help. I use system restore to go back a few days. No help. Eventually i crack the shits and uninstall Norton. My internet returns. HOWEVER i reboot and guess what... Blue screen and an instant reboot, PC wouldnt even go into safe mode.

Using a PreInstall Envoronment i boot up and backup all important stuff to a USB HDD.

Format, Reinstall Windows (with the network unpluged) First thing i install is Norton 2007. Then i activate the network and resinstall all my drivers ect. Everything seems fine. The PC has had no chancee in hell of coming into contact with a virus. But notran Now constantly reports that my PC is being attacked.. Where from?? MY ROUTER. It constantly issues popup messages stating my router is attacking my PC. So much so that attempting to run anything in full screen is impossible.. it always pops back to display the message and of course there seems to be no option to switch it off.

So in summary... I just paid $90 to have to format my HDD for no reson and to be told that my router is a hacker attemting to infultrate my system. Thanks alot. SCREW YOU SYMANTEC, you can Join EA on my boycot list for releasing such dodgy untested shit and not replying to my Emails.

Rant over

Fee

Nikolas · Sat 14/04/2007 08:38:11

About NORTON.

I know that it's not the best around, that it's heavy, unreliable some times but:
Once I had some trouble, I entered a live chat with a guy from Synmatec, and everything was solved in 5 minutes. That gave me a pretty good impression. So I stuck with NORTON and I have to say that I've not had any problems in general...

Radiant · Sat 14/04/2007 08:49:04

Well see, two weeks ago a faulty installer script nuked my hard drive (ptable, to be precise), claiming it was an 80-gig disk when it actually was 40. With my internet access shot I used some creative disk swapping to bring the computer in DOS mode, then found my twelve-year-old Norton Utilities disk and used Diskedit to actually fix the problem and repair the ptable.

Norton FTW! It was the best you could get in the Dos Days and those tools still trump nearly everything in the market today.

Mr Flibble · Sat 14/04/2007 14:17:55

Whenever we got a new computer a few years ago it came with Norton preinstalled.

For all it was worth, it did a good job. It caught things that looked like viruses and stopped "attackers" from "hacking" our computer (on a side note, I had zero faith in these so called attackers being real, or any kind of threat). But otherwise it did a good job. Nice extensive tools, internet stuff, the works.

However, the longer Norton was installed the less stable it became. It was slowly clawing my computer to death. For instance after booting up we had to wait several minutes for Norton to come on (attempts to simply use the computer Pre-Norton deciding to get out of bed did not end well) and whilst it doesn't sound like a big thing, it gradually became more and more annoying. And then came the false positives; viruses which didn't exist, and virus warnings for clean files. A lot of people I know can't download or play AGS games because Norton instantly deletes them, or marks them as unsafe and doesn't allow them to be used. Attempts to lower Norton's level of security invariably resulted in Norton swtiching to the highest level, and then freezing the computer. $:-\$

Anyway, when the free subscription ran out I used this as an opportunity to try removing it. I was actually shocked at the increase in performance.

BOYD1981 · Sat 14/04/2007 14:57:23

everytime i install a norton product, systemworks to be precise, i end up having to re-install windows due to it messing everything up and not uninstalling properly. the last time i used systemworks 2003 i got bombarded with viruses while anti-virus was updating, so now i just stick with free alternatives.

Evil · Sat 14/04/2007 14:59:05

I think people blame viruses for too many things and when they don't blame their problems on viruses, they blame them on their Virus Protection because they're "blocking stuff".

Most of the time it's bogus. We pay for a new subscription to Symantec Norton every year, and I feel it's worth it. Most people don't look beyond the fact that it doesn't catch everything. The truth it, it's what you probably don't see it catch is what matters. Nevertheless, the one thing that got by you found out about.

We can't expect everything to be 100% accurate. Hell, most of us can't get close to that on tests. I think being 99% is great. But for that extra 1%, I keep Ad-Aware around.

Just update everyday and you'll be fine.

LGM · Sat 14/04/2007 16:04:44

I haven't used a virus protector for years, and whenever I use on of those online scanners, I'm 100% clean.

I must be lucky.

BOYD1981 · Sat 14/04/2007 17:08:15

i tell you what, with a good firewall, a bit of common sense and actually knowing how to use a computer you can pretty much avoid ever getting a virus. i have AVG but i only run it every 4 months or so and have never had a virus, and the hardware firewall helps a great deal (although it also hinders me a great deal too, or rather the router itself does because it's shit).
it's usually kids that treat a computer like a toy (not true of all kids, i know) or silly girls with their dumb msn smiley packs and just blindly accepting every file sent to them without stopping to think "hang on, pictures usually have thumbnails..." (i'm going by personal experience of my sister with that one, luckily it was her pc and not mine, i'd slap anyone if i caught them using my pc).
it was all the other crap that comes with systemworks that messed my pc up, all i wanted to use was anti-virus and speed disk, but it goes and protects my recycle bin and generally makes it impossible to do anything on my pc.

Fee · Sat 14/04/2007 17:21:57

Yeh in the past ive been fine. Even now with a fresh install and firewall running, Norton running, im getting false alerts about my router attemting to attack me, legit attacks are not being blocked, and theres a strage popup appearing now saying "your antivirtus is in effective, download me". Somthing Norton clearly should be blocking but doesnt and im yet to figure out exactly whats causing it.... I should never have run that online scan.

Huw Dawson · Sat 14/04/2007 21:43:17

Meh. Norton's just dumb bloatware from my experiance. The last time I got a virus, I just downloaded AVG Anti-virus and destroyed the bugger. Then removed AVG. Anti-virus software destroys viruses easily, but it's when you leave them to do nothing at all that they start going crazy.

- Huw

EDIT: Curiously, AOL actually stopped those Messenger pop ups for me via their automatic computer checker. One of the few things I liked about AOL was the fact that it did a few complicated tasks like that really easily. It's a shame that AOL UK is now owned by Carphone Warehouse, and my connection has become very bad, very very fast.

makri · Sun 15/04/2007 09:38:58

In my experience, Norton AV is bloaty, inefficient and can be painful to get rid of (worse than many viruses I've encountered). Same goes for McAfee.

For my own computers I've used F-Secure (which isn't really lightweight) and AVG (which actually is quite light). All of them have their problems. I recently manually removed bits of an infection from a client's computer that had AVG in it, with the latest virus databases. The virus itself was over 6 months old, but full scan with AVG came up with nothing. Similiar stuff happened with F-Secure too couple years ago.

I agree that common sense and a good firewall can keep you fairly well protected. However, roughly 90% of internet users don't have even trace amounts of common sense in them.

Radiant · Sun 15/04/2007 14:33:32

Quote from: BOYD1981 on Sat 14/04/2007 17:08:15
i tell you what, with a good firewall, a bit of common sense and actually knowing how to use a computer you can pretty much avoid ever getting a virus.

True enough. I tend to uninstall AVG because it's a CPU hog at undesirable times, and reinstall when needed, once per month at most. I do run regular ad-aware scans, but they tend to turn up no problems.

Raggit · Sun 15/04/2007 15:22:41

It really sucks that you can't get a computer without some sort of security and anti-virus software installed on it. It wouldn't be so bad if the antivirus software didn't hijack your computer to prevent it from being hijacked.

I ordered a new PC last year, and as soon as it arrived, I uninstalled McAfee. Now a little window pops up all the time saying, "OMG!!11 YOUR COMPUTA MIGHT BE AT RISK!!!11!! BUY PRODUCTS NOW!!"

Akatosh · Sun 15/04/2007 16:21:28

...are you sure McAfee is causing this and not something like "Win Antivirus Pro" (or something like that)?

Mr Flibble · Sun 15/04/2007 16:48:32

It's probably Windows XP's Security Centre thing.

Fee · Sun 15/04/2007 21:46:28

Its probly WifFixerPro/WinAntivirusPro 2007 advertisment wich im getting constantly now.
Even tho im "protected" this keeps coming up. It keeps poping up and the changing the current page im on to its page.

Scans say im clean. The Symantec site says their protect against this threat but it doesnt even see it.
The Manual removal instrructions need updating as its not in the registry where they say it is.

Now i just boot up and first thing that pops up is "rundll32 cannot find qoppo.dll"
Maybe its time to install Mac OS on this PC :/

lol... NEVER!!

SinSin · Mon 16/04/2007 02:41:50

I have never ever liked norton its zonealarm all the way for me
I had norton given to me by my driving instructor and it deleted all of my dll's
As you can imagine i wasn't impressed so i binned those dreaded disks

makri · Mon 16/04/2007 04:07:54

Quote from: Fee on Sun 15/04/2007 21:46:28
Its probly WifFixerPro/WinAntivirusPro 2007 advertisment wich I'm getting constantly now.

I successfully removed WinFixer/Vundo infection from a clients computer a few weeks ago. You need to do it manually with instructions, just an antivirus software cant do it.

monkey0506 · Mon 16/04/2007 08:17:26

I'm not entirely sure Norton has ever been a good thing....some of the best virus definitions perhaps...as much as the program costs, they best keep their definitions up-to-date....but the program is needlessly resource heavy...and annoying to work with. Very needlessly annoying to work with. Yes. I suggest someone just write an AV program that can tap into Norton's database of virus definitions....that would be the best AV program ever. :

Tartalo · Mon 16/04/2007 10:57:17

About AV, I'll share a trick for those that repair other people's PCs. Everybody knows that it's easier to clean viruses if you don't boot from the infected partition, but the available free antivirus programs whether need to be installed or creating boot diskettes for them is difficult.

Lately, when I have to clean an infected Windows I use TRK (Trinity Rescue Kit):

It's a Linux Live CD with NTFS write support, the possibility to install F-Prot antivirus, and an auto-update feature so it's a good tool for Windows virus cleaning. (It also has many other tools that can be useful for information recovery in general)

The drawbacks are that it has no grafical interface, so be ready to learn a couple of commands, and that the documentation is not very good, so you better read it twice.