Nortons protection

[devilbliss]

my is up for renewal. Is there a free equivalent.

[vehelpfulguy]

I use the following 4 programs - all of which have a free version (the companies also do chargable versions).

AntiVirus - AVG

Firewall - ZoneAlarm

Spyware - Adaware

Windows monitoring - WinPatrol

There are other free versions of similar programs which i am sure others will mention.

[ugly_bob]

only problem is uninstalling Norton - it can be a real bitch!

[theprof]

Norton is not that difficult to remove when you know how ugly_bob:

The first step is to remove everything you can relating to Norton or Symantec via "Add/Remove Programs" in the Control Panel. Some utilities will remain and you may receive a warning to that effect.

The final step is to type "msconfig" into the "run" box. Click OK, then select the "Services" tab on the window that opens. Untick everything with the word "Symantec" or "Norton" in the list. Click "Apply" and "OK" and restart the PC.

You should find that everything relating to Norton has been removed upon restarting.

[ugly_bob]

must be one of those urban myths then. I've never had it at home, use AVG at moment, but have heard over and over that it is almost impossible to remove completely

[theprof]

ugly_bob:

I won't say you're mistaken in what you say about Norton because I learnt about this trick when I was having problems with Norton myself.

What happened was that I had a copy of Norton SystemWorks 2002 installed on one of the PC's at home and I wanted to upgrade to NAV 2006 and NIS 2006. Like
everyone else, I found it impossible to completely remove all the components of the program using the standard methods.

At the University where I work, we have a couple of ex-Symantec technical boffins on the payroll. I took the problem to them and they told me in an instant what to do.

Their method, which I have related above, worked like a dream.

Curiously, they did tell me that from their experience, hardly anyone ever thinks of trying to remove Norton via msconfig.