Changing Anti-Virus Programs from Norton

Jeff Strouse · Post by **Jeff Strouse** » 21 Apr 2006 5:07 am

Once I decide on the new program, do I need to delete Norton before installing the new one, or can they run concurrently until I see if I like the new one?

I'm still deciding on several tips given to me in a prior post:

**My ISP provides McAffee for free, but I had problems with that years ago on another machine. Perhaps this is no indication that I would have problems now.

**AVG AntiVirus. http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1 Only the first year is free. I'd have to do this again in a year.

**CA EZ AntiVirus. http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft/ Also free for the first year.

**Free-AV. http://www.free-av.com/ Classic edition is free, premium is pay.

I'm leaning towards the McAffee or the CA EZ Anti-Virus.

Any last mintue suggestions or warnings? My main concern is that I don't lose any data. I have lots of music, videos, and pics on my harddrive that I'm in the processing of backing up. But, it's too large right now to do it all quickly, and I want to get virus coverage. My Norton expired in January, and I've had no updates since then.

Thanks!

[This message was edited by Jeff Strouse on 21 April 2006 at 06:09 AM.]

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 21 Apr 2006 7:21 am

First, you will have to uninstall Norton. If you are lucky it will uninstall and not leave too many traces. If you are unlucky, like many, it will leave a lot of fragments that may manually have to be removed. Norton has a program that is supposed to remove fragments still left - I ran that program on my PC (after uninstalling Norton Internet Security 2005) and it screwed up Windows XP to the point I had to do a new (clean) reinstall of XP and everything else.

As far as other programs, many posts on the Dell users forum don't speak well of the current Mcafee (Dell was supplying a trial verson with their PC's for a while).

I've been using the C.A. EZ Armor security suite for almost two years (It's "free" for RoadRunner customers). It's worked great, no "bloatware" like Norton and McAfee. EZ Armor uses ZoneAlarm Pro as the firewall part of the suite. I have several clients that I support on RoadRunner and they have all went to EZ Armor, at my suggestion, and all are happy with it.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 21 Apr 2006 8:29 am

I use AVG Free Edition for my personal computers. It is updated almost every day with priority updates to meet emerging threats. It lacks the advanced scheduling features of the paid version, which also has more servers for sending out updates, but it works quite well.

One note though. While AVG Free is scanning your system for viruses it consumes a lot of CPU cycles and drags down your system response to launching and closing windows and applications.

------------------
Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
or my computer troubleshooting website: Wizcrafts Computer Services,
or my Webmaster Services webpage.
Learn about current computer virus and security threats here.
Read Wiz's Blog for security news and update notices

[This message was edited by Wiz Feinberg on 21 April 2006 at 09:29 AM.]

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 21 Apr 2006 8:56 am

AVG Free works great here.

Unfortunately it can be hard to get rid of the Norton (Symantec) anti-virus programs that come pre-installed on many new PCs. It is not as simple as just running the uninstaller. I was able to do it by searching Usenet for "get rid of Norton" and similar phrases but I forget the deails now.

Roy Thomson · Post by **Roy Thomson** » 21 Apr 2006 10:40 am

I had Norton and it would not deinstall.
The only way I could get McAfee on my hard drive was to install Windows again so that
I ended up with Old Windows and New Windows
on which we installed McAfee.
It worked but ,,,,Not the way to go.
I ended up getting a new 120GB hard drive
and started over.
Never again with Norton. That was a frustrating experience.

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http://www.clictab.com/RoyT/Roy_Thomson_Steel_Courses.htm

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 21 Apr 2006 2:25 pm

I've been using www.avast.com for the past couple of years. Free and there is usually an automatic virus update everyday. It announces it, and sends up an alert flag.

Avast also announces there is a latest version for download.

It just caught about 20 sizzop trojan viruses after I downloaded an anti-animation Firefox extension.

Works real well; so far.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 21 Apr 2006 3:24 pm

It just caught about 20 sizzop trojan viruses after I downloaded an anti-animation Firefox extension.

The Firefox Extension you mentioned does not contain any viruses. I have downloaded it from both addons.mozilla.org and from the Author's website, and inspected every file. They are mostly text files and are all clean. Your viruses were acquired through a different medium than Firefox extensions. I also read reader's comments about the Extension and there is no mention of viruses or anything like that.
Correct me if I am wrong.

------------------
Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
or my computer troubleshooting website: Wizcrafts Computer Services,
or my Webmaster Services webpage.
Learn about current computer virus and security threats here.
Read Wiz's Blog for security news and update notices

[This message was edited by Wiz Feinberg on 21 April 2006 at 04:25 PM.]

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 21 Apr 2006 6:16 pm

Wiz,

All I can say, is the viruses occurred just after the download. I ran Avast. Got rid of all viruses [supposedly]

Then it started again. Ran Avast and got rid of more viruses.

Started thinking what were the last things I've done on the PC that MIGHT point to the problem.
The only obvious thing was the animation DL.

So, I took it off.

And no more viruses.

I didn't intend to blame Firefoxe's animation program. I was simply stating what happened
sequenchly. No big deal. All I know now, is my PC is running OK.

If you say there are no viruses in there, then I believe you. You certainly know more about PC's than I do.

Pat Kelly · Post by **Pat Kelly** » 22 Apr 2006 12:56 am

I, too, had trouble uninstalling Norton. I don't remember now what exactly it was that prompted me to run the uninstaller several times (probably frustration). However it did eventually get rid of the beast. Three goes at it if memory serves me.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 22 Apr 2006 12:14 pm

NAV is tenacious. I often have to resort to a combination of running their cleanup tool, and manually deleting folders and sub-folders. I also found that if the uninstall goes badly I can reinstall the program and then reboot, then uninstall it.

Norton AV contains several components that must be uninstalled in a certain sequence.

------------------
Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
or my computer troubleshooting website: Wizcrafts Computer Services,
or my Webmaster Services webpage.
Learn about current computer virus and security threats here.
Read Wiz's Blog for security news and update notices