Rating: 
Summary: Program Attempts to Contact a "Third Party" through Firewall
Review: The Norton Antivirus program seemed to work OK at first but after a recent update two components of the program attempted to contact "crl.verisign.com" through my firewall. I denied access for the Norton Antivirus to communicate with Verisign but the problems did not end there. When I would open any of my Microsoft Word documents the Word document would attempt to contact crl.verisign.com during the Norton document virus scan. If the access is denied at the firewall it takes over ONE MINUTE to open a word document while the firewall blocks hundreds of attempts to contact crl.verisign.com during the virus scan.I went to the company's website to obtain information and to post my question - Why is your program contacting a third party? - on their support posting site, but Symantec has taken this away, opting for a small program "download" that I would have to allow access through my firewall. I think I speak for others when I express a concern about ANY program on my computer attempting to contact an unauthorized third party via a firewall. What would have happened if I had had Norton Internet Security (Norton - Symantec's Firewall/Antivirus program) on my desktop? Would Norton's firewall allow connections to this unauthorized third party? Unable to get answers to my questions from Norton-Symantec and unwilling to wait over one minute for my Word document virus scans to complete I uninstalled Norton AND, now get this, during the uninstall it attempted to contact crl.verisign.com to report the uninstall! I completed the uninstall then proceeded to do a complete reformat of my drives and then a reinstall of all of my programs MINUS Norton's Antivirus program. Due to a lack of free support from their site and a program that attempted to contact an unauthorized third party server through my firewall, I will never purchase another Norton or Symantec product in the future. I received good service from this product for a few months, but one of their program "updates" made it worthless.
Rating: 
Summary: OK But only 1 year's update included!
Review: I followed the instructions to the letter, with Emergency Recovery disks, all applications closed & so on. Installation was S-L-O-W, don't be in a hurry when you do this (I use a Celeron 1.2 Ghz with 512Mb RAM). Also at first my PC ran slowly too, web pages especially took forever to load then appeared in a flash, as if the Web connection was in trouble. A Re boot solved that & there hasn't been a re-occurence since. The Virus file update following install was fine & quick, but the re-scan for troublesome files took FOREVER, over 30 minutes on my 60Gbyte drive! (with 20 Gbyte of data on it) It turned up no viruses but highlighted some unwanted, nasty, intrusive MalWare & rogue dialers, so I'm happy with the results. One MAJOR bone of contention is you're only given 1 year's worth of virus file updates. This is a definite No-No when you pay $50 for this software. I'd expect at least 2 years, preferably 3. Obviously Norton has taken a page out of Microsoft's book. The PC runs fine, no blue screen (yet!) no noticable slow downs (I know people who have this trouble) & all my peripherals work (I know someone who's digital camera won't connect when Norton is running). Relieved? Yes, I use my PC for studying & work so now I'm a happier knowing a virus attack is a lot less likely.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely difficult to install
Review: This product was extremely difficult to install. We followed all the directions to a T and worked with the tech support. Tech support is ok but we were dealing via email with someone in India I believe. We finally had to call our PC mfgr Dell to uninstall and reinstall everything including windows, and then we were able to install Norton. Since then Norton has worked fine. So maybe we had some sort of Virus, but if so, Norton and no other virus software ever detected such a virus. I give it 3 stars because of the difficult installation, 5 stars since then.
Rating:
Summary: Apparent Incompatibility Problems
Review: As someone who refuses to kowtow (by checking in with Microsoft to get permission to reinstall software that I legally own in the first place) to Bill Gates every time she reformats her hard drive (an annual event for me), I still use win98 rather than xp. On the box of my newly-purchased Norton Antivirus 2004, the compatible operating systems are listed, including win98. Apparently this isn't true, because after installing NAV 2004, I was instructed to rerun win98 setup. I did, then encountered an error message. Each instance required my hitting the reset button; nothing else would eliminate these error message boxes. Things alternated between my having to rerun win98 setup and uninstalling NAV2004 and reinstalling it. I have given up. NAV has been great in the past, but I will not be forced into using windows xp just so I can continue using NAV products. I was further surprised to see that NAV required my installing IE 6 when I never use Internet Explorer at all. I'm beginning to wonder if Norton has sold out to Microsoft.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid like the plague
Review: Do NOT buy this product. It hosed up my brand-new, out-of-the-box, no-other-software-installed, system big time... wouldn't let me install or un-install it or any other program; trashed my internet access; and wouldn't run itself properly. I tried (several times) the 8 or 9 different possible manual solutions offered on the Symantec web site to fix or remove the software (an indicator of how bad this software is)... to no avail. After a complete re-format and re-install of XP Pro and AFTER HAVING TO PAY VIA THE 900 Symantec "SUPPORT" NUMBER (they won't help for free)I am finally rid of this piece of crap. The online tech (at the per-minute charge) admitted that they have lots of disgruntled customers and unresolved problems. DO NOT BUY this program (or Norton Internet Security) which caused similar problems)... go with McAfee or another vendor instead...
Rating: 
Summary: The BEST AntiVirus Software!
Review: I'm an IT professional who has used Norton exclusively for several years and I've never had a problem with their software or viruses. I run Norton Antivirus on all of my computers. I also run Norton Internet Security (includes Norton Personal Firewall) on the ICS (shared internet) computer. Just make sure to keep the software and virus patterns up to date via the 'live update' feature. If you don't have a good antivirus/firewall software, you are just asking for trouble. That's why I like Norton's Internet Security a bit better. It includes Norton Antivirus, Norton Personal Firewall, Spam Control, and Parental Control, for just a few bucks more. INSTALL NOTE: If you have an older copy of Norton installed-- uninstall the older version FIRST, before attempting to install the 2004 version.
Rating:
Summary: Read INSTRUCTIONS for Successful Installation!
Review: I had formerly had Norton 2003 on my HP Pavillion Pentium 4 2.53GHz with 512MB. That worked fine. I wrote another review stating how I needed to do something after an accidental McAfee Virus Scan corrupted my registry of my Norton 2003, so without protection I had to do something quick for my computers safety and my own peace of mind. My computer had been so far gone, due to many deletions I had made, and not learning to leave things alone. I had just installed MSN Premium for my DSL and nothing was working correctly at all. I had no choice after the system was running haywire and doing nothing right, but to do a complete destructive recovery on my HP. For anyone who has ever had to start from scratch, well it was not easy. Luckily the great feature of HP is your D recovery drive. You can turn back time and make the computer once again, brand new. After taking on the daunting task of re-installing every patch from microsoft update, all my former internet software, printers, and well, EVERYTHING, all over again, it was time for Norton to be re-installed too. I had bought the 2004 version after the initial destruction of my Norton 2003 from that useless free McAfee Virus Scan that does NOTHING, but that installation of the 2004 was lost when I did the recovery. I was able to redownload from the site, where I purchased it, as they let you do that two times more in 60 days of purchase, which is great in my opinion. You just need the info they send in the email when you purchase. I saved a copy to the desktop too so it is always there, and I got the backup disc too. I was able to install this and run it flawlessly ever since with no problems at all. I think alot of you that are having a problem with your Norton 2004 software is that you are not reading the installation document at the Symantec Site. This is crucial apparently to a successful installation. Have all of you first done the complete Defragmentation to your hard drive C as instructed? Have you cleaned out the temporary files completely? Have you removed ALL former Norton software and clean booted the computer as instructed? I did ALL of that and whatever else the instructions said to do, and my software works just great! My computer NEVER runs slower due to Norton 2004 software. Even when I am doing a complete scan and the Norton is running in another window, I can surf super fast, play games or whatever, with no glitches, no freezes, no PROBLEMS at all. I had some pictures sent to me, and Norton even detected a malicious script and blocked it after asking me, very efficiently, and logged it. It finds any spyware very quickly, live update works great too. My email is not supported by this program, clearly stated by Norton, but it DOES find anything in the email before it gets to my drives anyway, so in that case, works just fine. I cannot understand all the problems and complaints here, and hope that my words can help some others. I was afraid to buy this because I read my fellow reviewers thoughts and have respect for other opinions always, but this time I must disagree. On the subject of customer service, it is great. Online support wrote me at least 10 times in reference to every single question I asked. The first reponse took a few days, but the next several emails came fast. They included links to the site with all appropriate information I needed, which was informative and helpful to me. One email had the instructions to install Norton 2004. Not only was the tech support helpful, they gave me a FULL YEAR extension, ON THE HOUSE for all my troubles and for re-purchasing an upgrade with Norton as I lost some of my old subscription time on my 2003 which was good until 9/2004. They made the time up to me, and then some. Bottom line is, this is excellent software with NO defects, NO freezes, NO slowing the machine down in the least, NO crashes, NO re-activations, NO rebooting, NO PROBLEMS! If you are having this trouble, I would suggest you go read the document at the site, how to install Norton 2004 and clean boot the computer. If you unistall and reinstall once more the right way, you may just get a far more positve experience out of Norton Antivirus 2004. Good luck cyberfriends!
Rating:
Summary: I am so sorry I bought this
Review: First, I had NAV for many years and all went swimmingly. Yesterday, I decided to upgrade to NAV 2004, so I went to Symantec and downloaded the upgrade version. I am no computer neophyte, and I followed the instructions (written for an audience of third-graders), and it simply would not allow me to continue the verification process, i.e., the encrypted security key must have been SO encrypted even THEY could not decipher it. In any event, it also destroyed my registries for anything related to Norton products, rendering Norton Internet Security unloadable. And, I have no idea how it did this, but I couldn't even get my e-mail server to respond. I went to the Symantec site, followed all the troubleshooting instructions, uninstalling, installing; several times, and decided I had to contact a person. Oh, yeah, this you can do, but it will cost you. I will NOT pay for tech support of a product as problematic as this. I simply will no long purchase anything from any company that does not have adequate, PERSONAL customer support.
Rating:
Summary: Norton SystemWorks 2004
Review: I paid $54.99 for this product and it loaded and looks real pretty. Gee it would be nice if Symantec had put on the installation disk the lusetup.exe file. This means that the product purchased is worthless as you can not get Live Updates without that lusetup.exe file. Don't bother trying to download it over a weekend, Symantec is closed for business then. Once you get the lusetup.exe file executed, you still can't get Live Updates, you either get error 1853 or 1814 or any error they would like to give you. I am returning the product for a more user friendly one, not Norton.
Rating: 
Summary: Auto-Protect makes Internet Explorer 50 times slower
Review: What's worse, getting a virus or using Auto-Protect? After a fresh installation of a Windows XP upgrade, and a faster processor, my PC was running great for many weeks. I then decided it was the way I liked it and installed Norton AntiVirus 2004 to finish off the installation. All of a sudden my broadband connected PC that normally loaded web pages quickly was excruciatingly slow. Hitting the drudgreport.com pages usually took about 3 seconds to complete, but had changed to over 2 minutes to complete loading of all elements on the page! It behaved this way until I disable the "Auto-Protect" feature. Leaving that feature on was as bad of an effect of any virus I could imagine getting caught with. Of course Symantec's web site is of not assistance. Earlier today my searching would not turn up any information about slow performance (except to shift the blame elsewhere). I found an Internet article that referred to a post that Symantec had on their site, but it was a broken link. Further attempts to use Symantec's support web site gives me messages indicating the support functions are not operational. Also:
* No time setting for automatic scans. I guess NAV is better able than me to decide when to run. * Non-administrator users on my PC get nagged to check for updates, and are then promptly told they don't have access permissions to update. Gag! I thought NAV was the premier anti-virus product on the market :-) After Rebates, I got this practically for free, but I am contemplating whether or not it was worth it. How can they release this stuff??
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