Archive for the 'Small Business Tips' Category

Overview

In the late 90’s and even into 2000 and 2001, Norton Anti-virus was considered an excellent product. Unfortunately, the quality of the software has changed much faster than user perception.

According to the Wikipedia article on Norton anti-virus:

Despite its widespread adoption, it carries a reputation within parts of the computer enthusiast community as being slow and inefficient, ineffective, and difficult to uninstall. Some computer professionals have reported encountering machines infected with a virus despite having NAV installed and (in most cases) being fully up-to-date.

I completely agree. These are my anecdotal experiences with Norton Anti-virus.

The Short Story

Anti-virus should be effective, fast and mostly in the background. It shouldn’t pop up windows all the time asking you questions.

In short, dump Norton Anti-virus. I know it came pre-installed with a trial period. Just delete it. Get a decent product. Any of the following are cheaper, better and faster:

• Computer Associates eTrust
• F-Prot
• Norman
• BitDefender
• Kaspersky

Notice that I didn’t mention McAfee. It’s just as bad as Norton.

Performance

I consulted with one customer who was frustrated with “Word opening documents slowly”. They were using Norton anti-virus 2003.

I performed the following tests:

1. Open a test Word document. Time to fully open document: 2 minutes, 10 seconds.
2. Uninstall Norton 2003.
3. With no anti-virus installed - Open the same Word document. Time to fully open the document: 6 seconds.
4. Install Computer Associates eTrust Anti-virus. Open the same Word document - 8 seconds.
5. Remove eTrust and reinstall Norton Anti-Virus 2003. Open the same document - 2 minutes, 12 seconds.

I presented these findings to the client. Obviously they purchased a site license for Computer Associates eTrust Anti-Virus. They have been using eTrust for two years now - no performance complaints and zero virus infections.

Protection

I consulted with another customer who was suffering from an obvious virus infection. They were using Symantec (Norton) Anti-virus 2005. I booted a clean BartPE image and ran a full virus scan, which detected 12 virus files.

I moved these 12 virus files to a new directory and renamed them from *.exe and *.dll to *.bad. I also cleaned up the system registry to ensure that no virus was active or able to be started.

Here is where it gets interesting. I then rebooted back into Windows 2000, and made sure the Norton Anti-virus 2005 was fully up to date. I then performed a virus scan of my new directory that contained 12 identified viruses. Norton detected none of them.

I uninstalled Norton, and install Computer Associated eTrust and scanned the entire machine. eTrust correctly identified all 12 of the known viruses, and confirmed the rest of the machine was virus-free.

The client has been running fine without any re-infection for over a year since that time.

Summary

These just a couple examples. I have dozens more, but the story quickly becomes repetitive. I often find customers who have purchased a new machine and want to use the Norton Anti-virus for a year because they’ve already purchased it. I understand the emotion, you hate to “waste” your subscription. Trust me, it’s not worth it. You are more vulnerable and are using a bloated, slow and ineffective product.