....Heard about this, and other issues, with Norton AV. Your best bet is to shitcan Norton and get yourself a copy of PC-Cillin 2003. I've had PC-Cillin for 5 years and I have never had any problems. Never a virus, worm, or trojan (fingers crossed) plus you can incorporate/create your own custom firewall. Can't beat that with a stick!

The only problems that you may encounter are WINDOWS related. I've had two or three issues recently with Microshit's XP security updates, but other than these, I have nothing but praise for PC-Cillin.😀

cypher-neo wrote:

I know Norton is supposed to give me peace and security form viruses, but it seems to me that it's acting like a virus itself. I have little or no control over how the program operates and it has frequently wrested control of my computer from me.

Has anyone else had problems like this? Any suggestions? Solutions?

IMHO, Norton AntiVirus (and any other tools that Norton SystemWorks likes to have running all the time actually) is a clunky, bloated mess (even more than Windows itself!). I have disabled all automatic features and only use it to manually scan. I know this is less secure, but I have an aging system myself (PIII-550) and can't afford to waste resources on such a hog.

I average about 1 Interet worm infection per year (Nimda, Blaster, Welchia), but those are more due to not using a firewall than not using a virus scanner regularly enough.

AVG is pretty good; http://www.grisoft.com and it's free for personal use!

Wow, Free Anti-virus software!!! Thanks for the info, teamster!! I'm just curious to know , how can somebody offer AV protection at no cost? Hopefully, this will become a trend; I can't wait until I can get a free Internet connection!:)

FYI: HunterZ....
I, myself, have a 'older' system; a Pentium 450 Mhz. MMX, and I have not had any problems with PC-Cillin 2003. It appears to be a passive, rather than active AV program. I haven't experienced any 'slowdowns' or anomalies while using the PC-Cillin Real Time monitor while surfing the web. The same can be said for using the active virus scan simultaneously with other applications.

Sorry if I sound like a pitchman for PC-Cillin, but I have to admit they have an A-1 product with regard to protecting your system from unwanted intruders. Believe me, I know. I've had both McAfee and Norton AV software that failed on several occassions, permitting viruses and trojans to invade my system.

For thosefolks that use a cable modem for access, you may want to consider using ZoneAlarm along with PC-Cillin.

I can't wait until I can get a free Internet connection!

That would be quite a thing! Have you read that rubbish in America about taxing use of the internet? And people wonder why one would become cynical 😜

What's the weather like in Essex today dud716?
Windy as hell here, I'm not looking forward to taking out my bike today!

Oh by the way, I highly rate PC-Cillin as well, I also use Trend Scanmail for MS Exchange at customer's offices. Brilliant piece of software.

Thanks for the advice everyone...

I mentioned what virus protection is used on my parent's computer (the one I hopefully will be allowed to reformat and repair). On my computer I don't use any virus scanning becuase I don't see the need for it. I have everything on my computer backed up onto removable Zip disks and if I have any problems with my computer I just reformat and reload everything (Gotten so good at this operation it takes me about an hour to finish)

I was hit by 1 virus in the past 4 years. I don't think comprehensive virus scanners are necessary if you watch where you go on the web. But a free passive virus scanner sounds very cool. Thanks for all the responses. It's been a big help.😁 😀 😎

The only problems I've had with Trend Micro PC-cillin 2003 were with the real-time monitor scanning compressed files that were hundreds of megs -- that would lock up the explorer for the duration. So, I no longer have it scan archive filetypes. 😀

HunterZ wrote:

IMHO, Norton AntiVirus is a clunky, bloated mess

Please use Norton Antivirus RETAIL in the future. The CORPORATE version is about as slim as you can get. Well not really I guess CLI is about as slim as you can get...but the 2 verions are vastly different.

To all interested parties....

Ugh, I'm a little late with this one, but here goes.

TREND MICRO, makers of PC-Cillin, has recently released TREND MICRO INTERNET SECURITY 2004. This AV software offers the same AV protection as PC-Cillin 2003 plus several additional features. Included are: privacy protection for your online transactions, anti-spam, e-mail scanning (both incoming and outgoing), and a URL filter. There is also a host of other goodies and tweaks to provide firewall and anti-virus protection.

I agree with Snover on the slowdown with compressed and/or zipped files, but with the number of fucksticks out there wreaking havoc with spyware, trojans, viruses, and the like, you should have something to protect your system from unwanted bugs and intruders.