Norton Anti-Virus

[medsecslave]

My NAV has just expired and I'm being prompted to renew it. My husband has just bought a laptop and purchased NAV and Microsoft Office. Could I install these onto my PC as well? Thanks.

[Whickerman]

you could, but they'd be illegal copy.

Not that that stops anyone.

[rojash]

You can't:

Office requires activation for the specific machine, so you will not be able to activate it on both machines. NAV checks that it is installed on a specific machine and will not allow you to update it on two machines (an AV program that can't be updated to deal with the latest threats is pretty useless).

In any case, you would be better off with Avast or AVG antivirus, which are both better products than NAV, and free.

And instead of MS Office, you could install OpenOffice.org, which will read and write MS Office files and is less resource hungry. This is also free.

You can then explain to your husband how he has wasted his money :-)

[spotit3]

I installed Microsoft Office on my desktop PC and also on my laptop. It was jsut a matter of ringing Microsoft, quoting the code and following their instructions. There was no queries re why I was installing it again.

[medsecslave]

I took the plunge and downloaded AVG last night. I don't know what went wrong but it took forever to load and then nearly two hours to scan my PC. This morning I couldn't access my emails and the whole PC practically ground to a halt. Panic stricken, I've done a system restore and am back to where I started. My son tells me I shouldn't have downloaded from Download.Com as it's full of viruses - don't know if that's correct? Are there any websites to steer away from? Thanks.

[tissuepaper]

I would recommend that you download AVAST as it's free to use virus software. I found it more effective than the Norton software I used initially.

You will have to delete any other virus software as there will be a conflict. I have used it for a number of months with no problems. Good luck with it.

[rojash]

Download.com is probably one of the safest and most trusted sources for software on the net. No idea where your son is getting his info!

Just about any AV program that you install will want to do a full scan initially, on the assumption that there's not much point in it preventing the incursion of viruses if you are already infected. You can, if you wish, stop the scan and restart it later, or leave it running overnight.

AVG, like all antivirus programs will want to scan your incoming mail. and this will slightly slow the process of collecting your mail.

Are you on a dial-up connection? Is your Outlook or Outlook Express set to "Hang up when done"? If so this can cause a problem with just about any e-mail scanner, including AVG and NAV, as it hangs up whilst the scan is still in progress and before all e-mails have been downloaded.

[rojash]

Should have mentioned that you MUST uninstall any existing AV package before installing another.

[medsecslave]

Should I have uninstalled the NAV even though it had expired?

[rojash]

Absolutely. When it expires it doesn't stop working - it just stops updating (thus becoming more and more useless over time).

[medsecslave]

Thanks.