Norton Anti-virus

[ryder911]

Anyone use norton. I recently baught it, and I must say, It really sucks! I have gotten about 10 virus's from just doing search on google for my term paper. It is horrible, it is supose to come with a firewall, but I don't think the firewall has stopped one thing yet, I tried changing the settings for it. Also, when I do the scan it is never able to remove any of the files, I have to try and manually delete them which sometimes it one let me and I have to spend like a hour looking up online if there is a way to remove it because norton doesn't provide any support, atleast none that I know of. There might be a 1800 number to call but I don't think there is and i hate wasting my time being on hold. Well this is just my 2 cents on norton anti-virus and why not to use it.

[Charmy]

www.grisoft.com best damn virus scan i have ever used, can clean almost anything, and best of all its completely free, as for a fire wall i use black ice, the only down side to it, is the first time you use black ice you have to go though a process where ever single program you start up is stopped and you have to approve it, other than that, it works very well, and it unlike a fwe of the other cheap firewall programs out there actually checks the outgoing and incomming information instead of just the programs name, and seeing if its on a list of approved programs or not. so anyway, if your having issues with norton go look at AVG they have much better virus scan, and if you do a search for fire wall, you should be able to find black ice somewhere.

[mikenune]

BlackIce Defender is possibly the WORST firewall program ever written (yes, even worse than Win XP's built-in ICF)!

I would STRONGLY recommend getting ZoneAlarm from ZoneLabs and using that instead.

As for Norton AntiVirus, make sure you have real-time protection enabled and Norton SystemDoctor disabled. You'll also want to allow Norton to run LiveUpdate every time it says to (defaults to every two weeks). I've used Norton for four years across about a half dozen computers (all using always-on, broadband internet connections and running anywhere from Windows 98 to Windows XP (minus Windows NT 4) and even worked with their Corporate version some. And I've never had a problem with virus infections.

From my experience with that program, I'd be inclined to say that the reason you are having problems is because it's a bad install or you configured it incorrectly.

I have also worked with AVG from GriSoft and, even though it is free, it also works very well. In fact, it's what we use here at work and what we recommend to others! If you really are having these kind of problems with Norton, I'd say go ahead and give AVG a try.

[RexChaos]

Only times I've ever seen people have trouble with NAV is when they didn't do their updates like the good little user should...

[ryder911]

It is fully update, going to check the config =) Hopefully that fixes it. I was havging a problem with updater, it wouldnt connect. I guess ill go try this.

[ryder911]

Last time i updated was 5/5/2004. Which is when I got it. The live updator doesn't work=( I can't figure out why. It has a link saying help for this error, and of course get page cannot be displayed. Any idea if my, linkseye router would've anythign to do with it?

[ryder911]

That grisoft link doesn't work=(

[gandar]

It worked for me. /shrug...

Try this one.

[ryder911]

Nope, says page cannot be displayed=( lol

[gandar]

Hmm...

I dunno then, unless you are running a program that prevents pop-ups or something. The links in the posts on the forum usually open in a new browser window and sometimes those programs will cause the error you're mentioning.

My only other suggestion?

Google AVG! :twisted:

[astrokitten]

If you are having trouble running live update and going to anti-virus scanner websites then you could have a virus that blocks certain antivirus sites and disables liveupdate. Had this happen to me on a few of my computers, the virus I had was agobot (spelling might be off), and my computer was acting just like you discribed. But there are tons of viruses that can do that. If you can get on trendmirco or bitdefender try running a virus scan there to see if there is a virus getting in the way with your NAV. If in fact it is a virus messing with your updates and loading anti-virus sites you may run into difficulty getting on the scanners .... seeing those msgs like "page cannot load" etc.

On the subject of NAV, it's a great anti-virus scanner, but ya you really need to keep up on getting the definations. The problems your having doesn't sound like they are because of NAV.

-astro

[gandar]

/nod to Astrokitten... I forgot to mention the potential for an existing viral infection causing his issues.

Doh! (/smack Gandar)

Here is the link to Trend Micro Online Virus Scanner

I hope it helps. I've had occasion to use that one myself. Ick.

Alternately, though, you can try booting to your NAV CD - should be able to run a cmdline virus scan from there, too. Especially if you made the Norton Rescue Disks at your initial install.

Good Luck and Keep us posted...

~Gandar

p.s. VIRUSES SUCK and SO DO SCRIPT KIDDIES THAT MAKE THEM.

[rocketdogg]

Astro is absolutely right. Several newer viruses (Agobot in particular) alter your hosts file to block antivirus sites, preventing you from free scans, updating virus definitions, or even just finding info. I just had this problem last week. Once clean, your host file may still be blocking you from those sites

You can try checking. %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts in Notepad. (no extension)

Here is an example of an infected host file:
[quote]# Copyright

[MrJag]

i used to use norton but about a year or so ago i uninstalled it and been useing trend-micro

from my experiance if ther is something it says is uncleanable it will tell you how to clean it