problems with norton anti virus

[Mrs Y]

it is stopping my home PC from accessing the internet. does anyone know how i can fix this without taking it to the repair shop? as i have done this with the same problem on my laptop, but cost me ?45.

many thanks.

[mockney piers]

Uninstall Norton Antivirus thus giving you access to the internet.

Install AVG, thus saving you 40 quid a year.

Works for me :)

If you want to keep it check your firewall settings, it'll be in there somewhere.

[Mrs Y]

It will not let me uninstall the norton anti virus.

Thanks

[mockney piers]

I don't think any programme shouldnt let you uninstall it.

Look in your system tray by the clock in the bottom right hand corner, find the norton symbol (you may have to press the littel left arrow to expand it in order to find it.

Right click on it then click Exit or Close. Say yes to all the 'are you sure?'s

Then go to control panel and either 'Add/Remove Programs' on XP and priors or 'Programmes and Features' on vista; find norton on their, click on it and in the former OS click the uninstall button, in vista right click then click uninstall/repair, and keep selecting the uninstall options. It should eventually go.

If it's being really stubborn got to task manager and kill it off from there.

Feel free to get more clarifications as that may have been a bit whirlwind as instructions go.

[Mrs Y]

Thank you so much, but I have already done, all of the above, still no joy!

[ruffers]

Which version is it? Isn't there some kind of uninstall tool you need?

It really is a horrible bit of software imho.

[Pickle]

Mrs Y, it sounds like you need to run the Norton removal tool - we had problems removing Norton from our laptop a while ago and it helped us. It's widely available online (free), you can try using this PC World link. You'll also find it on the Symantec website.

Good luck.

[ianr]

And if the removal tool isn't wholly successful, it's a fairly common problem, and there's a corresponding amount of advice floating around on the web, including more hands-on stratagems that are claimed to help.

You don't say what exactly is happening when you try shutting Norton down and running the uninstall.

Have you definitely, as Mockney advised, closed down the program before trying the uninstall?

I would in any case definitely double check, using the Task Manager or similar, that all Norton processes have beeen shut down. So check not only its Programs page, but also the Processes one. I don't know the Norton file names, but you may find them in the Norton Program Files folder.

[vinceayre]

Use a free tool called Revo uninstaller to erase all of the program you want gone.

AVG is excellent and free as Mockney says.

[mariababe]

I just (last hour) installed AVG and I had to uninstall norton to load avg...it highlighted norton in a box and I clicked uninstall and it did it for me....(I am so not technical) but it has worked!!! But am not sure if you can load avg without the internet?

[mockney piers]

"So check not only its Programs page, but also the Processes one."

Very good point Ianr, I should have been clearer on that. Much of norton is background processes so you need to go to that tab and find the norton processes (if in doubt google the process name and you should find out what it is and if it's safe to kill it).

Also kill it by right clicking on the process and clicking 'kill process tree' on the context menu.

I'd be very careful before downloading an 'uninstall tool' type thing. Google forums etc to be absolutely sure you're not going to make things worse by downloading some sort of malware. In fact part of me is wondering if part of the problem is that you have some malware that is running a DNS blocker (blocks your access to certain, usually anti virus/spyware/malware, sites) making it look like norton is blocking access to the internet.

My wife had one of those. it was called weejimmy.exe or something in the processes, she got it by trusting some content sent to her from a friend in facebook (actually it was utilising facebook to spread itself). Killing the process allowed me to download AVG which happily did the rest. Very impressive for a free product I must say.

[Sue]

I've used AVG for years (the free version) and am very happy with it.

Tried Norton once and had nothing but problems - it slowed my PC practically to a standstill.