once more, and has been said a great many times by a great many people, the XP Firewall is awful. Sure, it's better than nothing, but it's REALLY no recommendation to be making.

The recommedations are... Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall (free) or Zone Alarm (free).

I Continue to stand by AVG, but I note a number of people starting to recommed Avast. Then again, a lot of people recommend Norton, but that doesn't alter the fact that it's a pile of crap, and so I'm not going to recommend Avast until either I myself have checked it out, or a person I know to be worth listening to recomends it above AVG (I name no names, but that would be at least most of the forum moderators, and one or two of the techspot addicts of whom I have some idea of their ability)

Asa for that comment about all of the AV recommendations in this forum being "rubbish", well, the less said about a person who would have the arrogance and gaul to say that the better really. lol

I will check into this AVG and the firewalls, thank you.

No problem - and welcome to techspot by the way
AVG comes in a number of flavours...

http://free.grisoft.com
www.grisoft.com

Zone Alarm Firewall
ZoneAlarm

Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall
Kerio

Hi All,

Yes I too installed Norton Internet Security and its already driving my crazy. It takes forever to download e-mails, for it it to boot and little messages pop up all the time to tell me how good it was that I spent $120 on it.

Help please if you can, I used to play on a Java site called pogo. Now that I installed Internet security it wont recognise my java applets. I've clicked rebooted and lowered my security settings but no good. If anyone has any help I would be extremely grateful.

thanks Macca.

[B]HELLO and welcome to Techspot.[/B]

Go and download the free AVG, and free Zonealarm programmes in Spikes posts above. Then uninstall that Norton crapware.

Your computer will run a lot better without it.

Regards Howard

Norton has given me problems as well especially with some of my online games. I just use SpySweeper and a router now hehehe!

My sister has an interesting problem on her Packard Bell Laptop! A downloaded version of Symantec Antivirus was put oner oher laptop by a friend and worked fine for a day or so. Now if you attempt to go anywhere near the icon at the bottom right of screen, it will disappear! Just goes without a trace! The uninstall function has gone too! Not sure if it was ever there but its now gone. Restore gets it back, but for a short while. Anybody got any ideas?

[B]Hello and welcome to Techspot.[/B]


Go [URL=http://support.packardbell.com/uk/mypc/?PibItemNr=6952000000]HERE[/URL] And download this Norton uninstaller. It will allow you to see Norton In add remove programmes.

This seems to be particular to Packard Bell computers.

Regards Howard

did you find out how to fix Norton

Hi Howard!
Thanks very much for your quick response. I’ve just tried exactly as you suggested. When we try to remove using add and remove program, we obtain the following message. I'm probably doing something wrong.We do not have an E: drive! I’m now also aware that this E: drive is sometimes mentioned on error messages involving her MS Office too. Where has this E:/ appeared from? It certainly cant been seen. Any ideas?
Again thanks for helping.

Message as follows:
The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable. Click ok to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder containing the installation package to “Symantec antivirus.msi”

Use feature from E:/Symantec antivirus corporate addition 10.0.1/

She selects ok

Mess: The path cannot be found.

I am not a big fan of the Norton products anymore myself. After alot of investigating and testing, I have selected the avast! home version. It is also free for home use with a one year registration. Just renew it anually.

I have heard alot of good about Ant-Vir and AVG as well. Clam antivirus is not very attractive, but very thorough and again, it is free.

The key point to remember is the difference between an Antivirus solution and internet security solution. The AV just helps prevent, and/or remove viruses through real time and full systems scanning. The ISS prevents you from even getting exposure to the virus by blocking you from code and or sites that have the "potential" to be a problem. They do this by using "intrusion detection" looking for a certain fingerprint that is evident in certain types malicious software.

You can install the two separatly, even of two different brands. There is a lot of free ID software available as well. This link has a lot of good information about a lot of free software and the writer did a great job in reviewing and providing guidance into free software.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best..._utilities.htm

i currently use Norton 2005 *Thumbs Down* and it has taken me about the last 4 months to get it working how i would expect. it is true about its lack in ablility to detect and remove common trojans and has an evergrowing range of problems. Especially browser related ones..

My say.... F**K Nortan!

Never goin to buy it again....

Is there a way to temporarily prevent Norton Internet Security 2005 (and Norton AntiVirus) loading at boot-up?

Even if you disable the autoprotect feature Norton is still running all sort of other processes in the background. You best bet is to just uninstall it from your system and then burn the CD's. Then you look into some of the software that is suggested that you use in this thread.

when y0u vist the game site, please do not log in. Click the Norton Internet Security tool bar in Internet Explorer and uncheck the options to block ads and pop ups and then try loggin in

when you vist the game site, please do not log in. Click the Norton Internet Security tool bar in Internet Explorer and uncheck the options to block ads and pop ups and then try loggin in

Ok...I have read through all the posts on this topic and have downloaded AVG and Zone Alarm and uninstalled Nortons...I am using firefox...Spike, Realblackstuff and Howard...I trust your advice 100%. Zone alarm is telling me that I have no anti-virus on my computer and TuneUp Utilities is telling me I have no anti-spam...Computer Help, post 86 say's I should use AVast and Spike suggests Kerio, do I install both?

your problem may be that you have the firewall configured to block Active-X and Java applets which are required fro many internet games to run, try lowerin the firewall security levels and then retry the games

Hi there. I'm having trouble with my NIS and the only solution seems to be to reinstall. Problem is, it's been installed for 8 months and I just don't want to reinstall all the updates downloaded since then. Is there a way I can back up these updates and reinstall them into a clean version of NIS 2005? Thanks for your help.

I am pretty sure that you will have to download them all over again. At least with more programs that is the way it works because if you are going to reinstall you should uninstall the program first and then install again. Although you really should think about getting rid of the Norton stuff.