Norton Internet Security 2005 is Junk!! READ THIS CAREFULLY!

[frank2006]

I removed Mcafee Antivirus from my computer. I have used NAV on my notebook with XP home as OS with no problems. However on my old (2001, Win ME) notebook, I have experienced nothing but problems with Norton Internet Security 2005:
Blue Screen errors fatal exception occurred frequently.
Constant shutdown problems, when trying to shut down windows, a cursor would stay in middle bottom right of LCD, tried symantec's advice on shutdown problems, same problem kept happening.
While surfing the net w NIS2005 the other day, I got a virus. It was some 'backdoor.trojan' with various other names. I found in in Quarantine section, deleted it w no problem. Around the same time, I kept getting alerts from NIS2005 that 'bd bladerunner' was attempting to 'hack' my machine at various ports. (I had checked the security of the firewall at shieldsup.com; it indicated that all my ports were 'stealth').
At this time, I emailed Symantec who said I was infected with that backdoor trojan and that I would have to pay for tech support to remove viruses(40.00?)
So, fed up with norton internet security 2005, I removed it from add/rem programs;also did search w windows explorer and deleted all entries for 'symantec', norton, symantec.com, etc.(I wanted to do a clean install)
I went into registry editor(1st backed up registry), clicked 'find' and I typed in 'symantec'. Guess what, along with all entries for 'symantec' I find the 3 other names for that backdoor.trojan in the symantec area in the registry!!
Remember, I had done online virus scans, ran NIS2005 virusscan 4 times, tried a trojan detector, nothing was found. But I knew my machine was still infected. Even Spysubtract w latest definitions did not detect anything.
So I removed all 'symantec' entries + the 3 other ones that came up when I did search for 'symantec' in registry.
It was the strangest thing, when I did search for bd bladerunner thru google in my IE, no results were found if my slipstream was enabled(slipstream is accelerator for dialup)
In any event, I installed norton antivirus 2005 w no problems, updated definitions and downloaded 'zone firewall'
which works great(free!) and doesn't put 5 or 6 items in startup like NIS 2005 does(NIS 2005 is a resource hog, I urge you not to use this product, it causes all kinds of problems as I have stated in here and it will definitely slow your machine down considerably)
I am also using Mozilla Firefox which is 100 times superior to Interner Explorer. It has much better features, you can also set it to empty all your cookies when browser is closed. It is also more secure then IE; it has many features that IE does not have. You can download the latest version for free(14 min. maximum download at 46kbps)
Remember you don't always get what you pay for, in this case, zone firewall and firefox are superior to those products that most novices on this forum use.
Symantec and Mcafee want your money, then they turn the other way when you have problems w their software.
DO NOT BUY OR USE NORTON INTERNET SECURITY 2005- it is a piece of Garbage.
Read this post over and over again 5 times until you get the 'gist'
Windows ME
316mb ram
20gb hd(this laptop is old but still good)

 

[captaincrunch00]

It mostly just sounds like you dont know what you're doing.

Windows ME was a mistake, I'm pretty sure Microsoft apologized for that one, so upgrade that to 2000 Pro or better yet: XP.

As for Firefox being 100x superior to IE... You really dont know much about computers do you? Firefox had 19 security issues, 11 were critical in a 6 month period last year. IE had 15 security issues, only 9 were critical.

What were you thinking when you did a manual deletion of anything Symantec related? They make a tool for that, go download NoNav.zip from Symantecs site, or if you prefer, look for the SCSCleanwipe.zip from their site. They will take it all out for you in a jiffy, but there are some parameters you need to set so I dont recommend you use these because from what you say you probably just need to wipe your computer completely and start over.

ZoneAlarm has plenty of problems, I hope for your sake you downloaded an old version but I doubt you did.

http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-06-07.htm#2

http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-05-31.htm#2

I have 8 computers for one of the companies I do work for that have NIS2005 and they dont have any problems. They are running 2000 and XP computers.
I am willing to bet that 99% of your problems are because of ME.

 

[frank2006]

Caaptain Crunch 00:
NIS2005 puts 6 items in your startup folder; Symantec advised me not to remove any. As I said resources went from 94% to less than 70% after installing NIS 2005(these figures while 'online' dialup.
Symantec themselves advised me to delete all items by hand and thru registry editor. The tools you're talking about only remove a previous version of NIS 2005. I had 3 or 4 versions of Mcafee as well as Norton so I had to delete these items by hand. And what do you think of the fact that NIS 2005 w latest definitions did not detect trojan in registry. It was a fluke that while using regedit I noticed the remnants of the backdoor. trojan while searching for 'symantec' in regedit.
Also you have to understand I use laptops, not desktops with 1 gig of ram. Symantec and Mcafee are resource hogs; they will slow your machine down considerably(you probably use cable or dsl so you don't care)
Right now I have been using AVG(lighter on resources)
The important thing was the shutdown problem w NIS 2005; when I switched to Zone(I use the no-frill version without the extended features), the unit turned off every time without that cursor problem.
So I'm glad you're happy w Symantec; you're certainly entitled to your opinion(check out cnet's forum on 'what is the best antivirus program'); you'll find that most people are fed up with Norton and Mcafee.
And their tech support sucks as I have stated.
Take your money and run!!
Symantec SUCKS!

Frank

 

[frank2006]

By the way Firefox allows use to delete 'bad' cookies and stop them from coming back in your machine. Also gives you option to delete all cookies when browser is closed. Therefore, there are very few 'critical' objects detected if you set up Firefox correctly.
With IE, I always get 8 or 9 critical objects(these are cookies, but they track your activity) when I run adaware personal or spysubtract.
Also w Firefox, I noticed that my internal 'real' ip does not show; w IE the real ip address shows up every time even w the latest patches from Microsoft.
Test it out on

http://www.getip.com

Later.

Frank

 

[captaincrunch00]

Cookies are harmless. Yes, they track what website you've been to, but they dont do anything other than say "Hey, I've been to this website before!". They're just cookies. No harm no foul, so why worry about them so much? Are you worried the 64KB file will take up too much HD space?

I bet the mods of this board could tell you what your IP address is from your post... Have you ever sent an email from your computer? Ever visited any webpage? Guess what, your IP address is out there. It's public. It doesn't matter that people can get it. It's normal. Stop worrying so much.

I'm curious as to what your 'real' IP is and what 'fake' one Firefox shows. Does firefox show the 198.162.1.1 address, or the 127.0.0.1 address or something?

 

[ABAMOTO]

hmm... I have used both Norton 2005 and McAfee Home, and I felt that home edition anti virus may be working alright to protect your computer, it pretty much occupies fairy large amount of your CPU usage.

I would recommend corporate edition. A little bit more expensive but works way better.

In addition, even with the latest AntiVirus, I suggest a clean reformatting when user's machine is infected with any trojan or critical spyware / virus. If you have enough resource (Symantec Ghost and a clean image of your original state of your HDD, regular backup to NAS), you can wipe all the dirty things out of your comp and get it back online within 1.5 hours (of course, reular cloned image needs to be updated so you dont have to re-install many third party software or updates)

And I believe cookies do contain information other than what websites you been to. Sometimes cookies contain your valuable data as well. I am not sure how secure firefox is comparing to IE browser. However, a recent attack of inserting a spyware in numerous php websites shows that firefox can block many forced-installed program better than IE.

In addition, most hackers' attack still mainly target at IE users... I would say that I feel more secure using firefox.

just my 2cents.

 

[sysadmin123]

As far as firefox goes....with anything as it becomes more prominent and is used more by the IT community of course hackers and crackers are going to target it. Firefox has just recently hit it big so now I'm sure we'll see many more viruses/malicous code targeted at firefox.

You still can't beat the tabbed browsing though

But in our corp environment we still use IE.

 

[crow053]

I got the same readings with firefox and internet explorer. A side note, for hiding your ip try JAP, its easy, but like all proxies, slows you down.

http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html