Best way to remove Norton Antivirus

[Shutterbug]

I am changing over to another anti-virus program.
I realize I have uninstall Norton but is it just as simple as doing the add/remove program route or do I need to do more?

 

[cteddiesgirl]

Personally, I'd do a search on your pc and look for norton. Sometimes uninstallers will leave residual traces of programs.

 

[mickman1962]

Norton is almost impossible to complete get rid except for the most experienced PC people. Lots of registry editing. Uninstall will leave behind a TON of stuff.

 

[Dan Murphy]

BESY way? Get a new PC. It is a bear to get rid of, not sure you really can. I used it for years, won't go near it now. Good luck.

 

[Crazoo]

BESY way? Get a new PC. It is a bear to get rid of, not sure you really can. I used it for years, won't go near it now. Good luck.

Well you could just back up all the info you need and format the hard drive..

 

[Shutterbug]

Oh...you all are just full of good news arent you..lol

Well I found this http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/pfdocs/2004102216234906

maybe this will help...I just want to make sure my install of the new virus software goes smoothly.

 

[mickman1962]

Oh...you all are just full of good news arent you..lol

Well I found this http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/pfdocs/2004102216234906

maybe this will help...I just want to make sure my install of the new virus software goes smoothly.

even if you do as they say I bet you I can still find over 100 instancces of it still in the registry. A fresh OS install is the only real way.

 

[Dislifer]

BESY way? Get a new PC. It is a bear to get rid of, not sure you really can. I used it for years, won't go near it now. Good luck.

I'm curious...why do you say that you won't go near it now????

 

[ChristmasElf]

I too would like to know why Dan won't go near Norton now. Is McAfee better? And why would McAfee be better?

 

[airhead]

I hate Norton and was also thinking about changing both 'puters to McAfee. But I suspected it would screw up the system. I guess I'll just learn to live with it. why did Dell change to Norton?

 

[cteddiesgirl]

I too would like to know why Dan won't go near Norton now. Is McAfee better? And why would McAfee be better?

Yeah. I would also like to know why he doesn't like Norton. That's all my boyfriend will use.
But Consumer Reports states that Norton is better than McAfee.

 

[snowball22]

Good luck!!! It is like the plague!!!!!!!!!! It so screwed up my computer. When I tried to remove it, I had to call the tech guys 3 times to help me get my computer running normally again.

 

[WDW LOVR]

When I was trying to get rid of Norton my son (who does computer repair stuff for work) googled some program that he ran that identified all the Norton traces where he was then able to get rid of them. It was quite an ordeal. He spent probably 24 hours over 3 days trying to clean the system up.

The problem I had was Norton was almost too good. I was having all kinds of trouble with the Norton firewall (even messed up my access to the Disboards for a while). I've since been using EZ armour (from CA) for both anti-virus and firewall with good results. I've also installed Webroot Spysweeper which takes care of a lot of spyware type intrusions. I also run Ad-Aware and Spybot S+D every couple days.

But if you want to know what has made the biggest difference in all the virus/spyware battles is I now use Mozilla Firefox for my internet browser. It's free to download, uses a fraction of the memory and is not on the virus writers hitlist as it's not terribly widespread. Give it a try, I think you'll be plesently surprized.

 

[Shutterbug]

Well heres an update:
After looking at the requirements for the new software(Trend Micro PC-cillin) I found out I needed to have SP2 installed..something I had been avoiding for a long time because of the problems I have heard with it. Well I took a deep breath and went and downloaded and installed it....no problems!

The norton unistall went okay. I followed the instructions from the one link I posted earlier. I only had Nortons AntiVirus 2004, none of the other norton products. The new software installed perfectly

Reason I went with Trend was because it was ranked so highly Also when I ran their online scan they found a virus both Norton and the Panda online scan missed. Plus the price I paid at Best buy for it was 49.99 but there is a 25.00 mail in rebate.

 

[mickman1962]

I'm curious...why do you say that you won't go near it now????

As someone who has in the PC repair business since the IBM AT I used Norton religiously until about 3 years ago after I began noticing on the thousands, yes thousands of PC's I work on that after installing Norton problems would arise. It has become a bloated all reaching spider web of an application. Don't even get me started on their "system works" which just magnifies the problems even more.