Good or bad to run 2 anti-virus systems at once?

Life Technology
#1

The new computer I bought came with Norton anti-virus. However, my 3 free months being up, they are now asking me to renew. With my last computer, I always used AVG and was happy with it - plus the cost of a TWO-year AVG premium version license is slightly more than the cost of a ONE year Norton basic version license.

Anyway, I opted for the AVG, and now both programs are on my computer. Norton is about to expire; supposedly, it’ll still work, but I can’t get updates. Now I’m thinking, should I delete that sucker? I know little about computers, but imagine that both programs working at once will slow things down, and Norton will probably keep asking me to renew my subscription every 5 minutes…

#2

Get Norton out of your system, and this might not be very easy. Norton is very hard to remove once it has established its presence. It is a resource hog and not all that it once was security-wise.

AVG and AVAST are both fine systems that offer, IMO, better protection than the Norton monster, at much less use of system resources.

*I currently run AVG 7.5 Internet Security Suite…along with a few other things.

#3

IMO, you should delete Norton.

It will just slow your system down, and once it is out of date will be of little use anyway.

It’s probably not always the case, but I’ve had experience of two anti-virus software packages causing computers to slow down to a standstill. I don’t know if it’s cos they fight with each other or something.

Anyway, wait to hear if anyone else has any opinions.

#4

Agree with irishstu, more than one virus program is asking for trouble and will very likely slow your machine down. AVG is working fine for me since years.

#5

Danke fellas. Norton is HISTORY!

#6

How can one get Norton out of the system? I mean 100%. It’s always still somewhere, waiting to be revived again.

#7

Yep Norton loves to dig a trench and sit in it for ages. Mostly because it’s commonly deleted by some virus types in the past.

Here’s a guide on how to. It might be slightly old but still servicable.
askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_ … ystem.html

There’s also a second part to it so please follow the link at the bottom. Also, it will tell you to remove information from your registry and that can be dangerous if you remove the wrong thing so make sure you make a backup registry file.

#8

[quote=“cire1184”]Here’s a guide on how to. It might be slightly old but still servicable.
askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_ … ystem.html

There’s also a second part to it so please follow the link at the bottom. Also, it will tell you to remove information from your registry and that can be dangerous if you remove the wrong thing so make sure you make a backup registry file.[/quote]

Yeah, about that…

in the final step of his instructions, Dave states the following:

“Click on the little + to open the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive. Scroll way down until you get to the Symantec entries. Now just right click on each Symantec entry and hit Delete (making sure not to delete anything that isn’t explicitly listed as Symantec!!)”

Ok, that sounded a little scary, but I had a look. There are no files “explicitly” labeled “Symantec”, but there are a couple SymAData and SYMC files. Are those Symantec entries? I posted a query on Dave’s site but have gotten no reply as of yet.

#9

[quote=“Vay”][quote=“cire1184”]Here’s a guide on how to. It might be slightly old but still servicable.
askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_ … ystem.html

There’s also a second part to it so please follow the link at the bottom. Also, it will tell you to remove information from your registry and that can be dangerous if you remove the wrong thing so make sure you make a backup registry file.[/quote]

Yeah, about that…

in the final step of his instructions, Dave states the following:

“Click on the little + to open the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive. Scroll way down until you get to the Symantec entries. Now just right click on each Symantec entry and hit Delete (making sure not to delete anything that isn’t explicitly listed as Symantec!!)”

Ok, that sounded a little scary, but I had a look. There are no files “explicitly” labeled “Symantec”, but there are a couple SymAData and SYMC files. Are those Symantec entries? I posted a query on Dave’s site but have gotten no reply as of yet.[/quote]

Hmm, like I said the guide is kind of old. I haven’t used Norton in awhile so I am not sure what the label is now. You can open those up and see what’s inside.

#10

I tried that, but it was just more utterly meaningless (to me) abbreviations.

#11

If you dig around on Norton’s site, there is a tool available for download that should remove every remnant from your computer. Then I ran CCleaner to remove the unused Norton entries from the registry. It worked well for me when I made the switch from Norton to AVG.

Deleting Norton lowered my RAM usage considerably, made boot times faster, and the computer was generally more responsive.

#12

Wife’s pc came with norton. I deleted after I couldn’t use it. Massively complex, slow and unreliable.

Switched all pcs to AVG. I don’t even run checks all that often any more. Haven’t had a virus in ages. Touch wood. But then we don’t use MSN all that much, all email is through the web, too! Gmail, yahoo are much better with attachments these days.

Kenneth

#13

I am amazed that so many people switched to AVG as well! I switched awhile ago when I frankly got tired of Symantec’s bloatware. They were good back in the early 90s and late 80s but wow ever since they started acquiring companies and swallowing them into their “norton suite” they’ve just become…a drag.

AVG is definitely great. Even greater is moving to a Mac and not having to worry as much about viruses. Whatever you do though, stop using Internet Explorer unless you absolutely must. Use firefox!