Badly installed Norton Internet Security and GoBack (very slow PC)
A customer calls saying since renewing NIS, her PC is running unbearably slow.
Looking at the PC, I notice a few strange things:
- NIS is installed (but causing PC to run very slow)
- An older version of NAV is also running
- It looks like the older NAV is part of Norton Systemworks
- During a reboot, it also looks like Norton GoBack is also running…
The user says that she just wanted NIS, but since she didn’t understand most “prompts”, she just said OK to all of them (that explains GoBack).
The first thing I try is uninstalling NAV and NIS in the official way (add-remove programs)… but it fails (after 20 minutes of waiting)… OK, time to get ruthless.
I disable all symantec tasks in the startup folder, registry, and services
I then reboot and I’m pleased to see the PC is now much faster.
I try to remove GoBack, but it also fails. So I lookup how to manually remove it (from the net)… It involves a few reboots, but I manage to disable it completely.
As an aside: why would I want to disable GoBack? Under some circumstances, it can cause a HUGE slowdown in your system performance. All it takes is something (that GoBack doesn’t recognise) to write to the disk quite intensely (eg a disk defrag program not recognised by goback).
I once had a problem with a huge slowdown a few weeks after installing GoBack… I didn’t know why… its just so easy to forget about GoBack once it is installed. Once I figured out what was going on, I removed GoBack and vowed never to use it again. If you like the idea of GoBack, then do a daily backup to a second physical disk instead… it works much better.
Anyway, I now manually remove NIS, Systemworks, and any other Symantec application. Everything seems to work well, but I’ve run out of time (customer doesn’t want to spend more than 2 hours worth).
Since she seems to have lost the NIS install file that she downloaded from the internet, I tell her she should download the file again, then try installing it again (and if she has any problems, to give me a call). This way I won’t spend up to 1 hour waiting for a download to complete, and another 30 Minutes installing and configuring NIS.
“The first thing I try is uninstalling NAV and NIS in the official way (add-remove programs)”.
Forget it. These programs are so intrusive that
Norton provides their own removal tool.
Hope the url is ok.
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039
Hi David.
the url is OK, thanks.
I must say I’ve not had many problems uninstalling norton via add-remove.
I’ve actually had more problems with printers (brother in particular… they also provide an unintall program).
If you plug in the printer and then install the drivers, then it won’t work without the uninstall tool.
I can’t see why printers cant work like usb drives… just plug them in, and you get (at least) some basic printing ability… install drivers from the CD if you want scanner, fax, etc.
I like ranting and raving about crappy printers 🙂
I like ranting and raving about fax duet line systems.
I hate setting these up,especially when the
owners have laptops or modems that can’t
differenciate between ring tones.
I
I’ve never met anyone who has a fax duet line (but I’ve heard about them).
Aren’t they incompatible with ADSL broadband?
I thought so too, but I recently did one
that was adsl&fax sharing one number
and another number for voice calls.
I checked with Telstra and that was
the correct arrangement.
But when you mix in call waiting,
message bank and eptos! it gets
messy.
Especially with dialup modems with
crappy chipsets that answer everything!
All you can do is set the fax to be last
to pickup and hope all the other devices
recognise a fax tone.
Very hard to not be called back to
tweak things though.
Should have mentioned I am talking
about software faxing eg: winfax,winxp fax
etc.
Dedicated hardware fax machines
make it easier.
It’s when you send/recieve faxes with dialup
modems that most issues occur.
Given the cost of calling someone out to fix things, I would have recommended that the customer pay to get a real extra line… (depending on their circumstances).
GOBACK 3-4 NOTHING BUT TROUBLE. WHEN USED WITH WIN98 WAS GREAT, NORTON HAS DESTRYED MY COMPUTER ON 2 OCCASIONS, YOU CANNOT IMAGINE THE PROBLEMS, AND THE LACK OF SUPPORT BY NORTON. AFTER REMOVING NORTON, ADD REMOVE, DELETING, AND REMOVING ALL REGISTRY RE: NORTON AND SYMANTEC, I INSTALLED MACFEE, NO PROBLEMS. I HATE SYMANTEC!!!!!!!!!
I’m guessing that Symantec must have a very profitable deal with the major name-brand PC vendors.
I reckon it works like this: Symantic give HP, IBM, Dell, Acer, etc a few barrels full of money, in exchange for pre-installing NIS etc onto each PC that they ship.
The PC vendors can then afford to lower their prices slightly.
Symantec picks up a lot of annual renewal fees, just 3 months after the PC is sold, from average Joe consumer, who isn’t interested in shopping around for a good deal… NIS looks trustworthy enough, so it gets trusted.
Whoever (from Symantec) came up with this great scam^H^H^H^Hidea, must have been a pretty smart businessman.
M