Norton 360

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

After testing the beta on Windows 7 I have now installed it on my Vista system, which I use constantly.

I uninstalled NIS09 using the Removal tool, and manually removed the residual Symantec's Non-Plug and Play drivers.

I installed N360, and the installation went smoothly.

First, I want to thank you for not seeing the Ask Search bar up there any more.Thank you! I understand that it brings revenue, but you do provide paid, not free protection, and they did have a bad reputation, so thank you for listening. Put it on this site, hell, even include it in the Add-on pack, but I don't need a search bar in my out of the box security product, I have all the search tools I need, and Ask is not among them - by my choice, and thank you for keeping it my choice!

So far I've noticed that N360 starts slowly on the first couple of restarts, on the 2nd delaying the desktop from appearing for a couple of seconds. I will see if that gets ironed out by usage.

A question - what is the resource cost of having file overlay icons for backup info? Does that burden the shell (Explorer.exe) in any way?

Also, a couple suggestions - as a Full system scan is kind of a greater disk wear-and-tear operation, you could exclude it from the general task scheduling and allow the user to schedule it, say, monthly, as we could in NIS09. (If i missed something here, feel free to advise me).

Second, you could put Firefox privacy cleanup together with the IE cleanup - I was surprised a couple of times to see my Firefox history disappear, until I stumbled upon this option, a bit hidden in the settings panel.

Thank you for this product, I will add to this thread as the N360v3 experience continues.

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

I can now reiterate, after going through several reboots over the past few days - Norton 360 starts very slowly on my Vista Home Premium system, sometimes taking more than a minute for the tray icon to appear - after the desktop loads. Even the Windows Sidebar with the Norton Gadget loads before N360 does, and I get to see the 'spinning wheel' inside the Norton Gadget spinning for quite some time.

That's weird, 'cause the Beta started almost instantaneously on Windows 7 Beta.

Also, the CPU usage window takes qute a long time to load when I try to open it the first time (after the system start).

After that first time, it starts almost momentarily.

These are not bugs, but they are performance issues that should be looked into.

[Rob_N]

I have loaded V3 onto 2 Vista machines (one desktop,one laptop) and the tray icon is loaded within 15-20secs at the most after the welcome screen has gone,generally it loads within 10secs

Message Edited by Rob_N on 03-07-2009 12:08 PM

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

OK. I tried something Symantec generally advises for all unsoluble Norton software problems - I uninstalled N360 using Norton Removal Tool, and then reinstalled it.

And...

One step forward, one step back.

Norton 360 now starts up practically momentarily.

However, Windows Firewall is now, seemingly, irretrievably broken. The Windows Firewall service cannot be started neither automatically nor manually, even after Norton 360 is completely uninstalled.

I get these errors.

Event ID:      7024
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      ****
Description:
The Windows Firewall service terminated with service-specific error 6801 (0x1A91).


AND

Log Name:      Security
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing
Date:          8. 3. 2009. 6:03:31 PM
Event ID:      5028
Task Category: Other System Events
Level:         Information
Keywords:      Audit Failure
User:          N/A
Computer:    ****
Description:
The Windows Firewall Service was unable to parse the new security policy. The service will continue with currently enforced policy.

Now, while this is not a problem in terms of security, I fear having problems later installing Service Pack 2 for Vista.

The only repair I haven't tried for Event ID 5028 s pretty radical:

Registry corruption

If the system registry is corrupted, then the policy cannot be retrieved. The only supported solution to this condition is to reinstall the operating system. Registry corruption cannot be reliably repaired.

And I don't wanna go down that road.This problem isn't suited for chat support, I need a Symantec tech who knows the inner workings of Windows to look into this!

(PS  I have Vista Home Premium, so the Security Policy editor isn't available to me.)

Message Edited by TomiRed on 03-08-2009 06:46 PM

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

I solved my own problem, thank you very much.

This is how I did it:

---

Some logs have got corrupted in the new Vista transactional registry system.

The suggested fix is to delete some specific files from the directory c:\windows\system32\config\TxR 

Specifically:

- from an elevated command prompt go to directory "c:\windows\system32\config\TxR" {or the equivalent location on the machine}

- run "attrib –H –S *" to make all hidden files in the directory visible.

- run "del *.blf"

- run "del *.regtrans-ms"

- reboot the machine

---

Worked like a charm.

And Norton 360 got a tad slower to start, again.

Message Edited by TomiRed on 03-12-2009 11:47 PM

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

It is very likely that this error described above wasn't even connected with Symantec products, the files I deleted were dated January 9th, and I then noticed something was wrong when I uninstalled N 360 and attempted to start Windows Firewall.

Another point on feedback, this one also positive.

I manually submitted, through N 360, an undetected fake AV installer yesterday evening (CET), today it's detected as AntivirusXP 2008 and stopped even from being downloaded. And the site has a red X.

Now that's a good reaction, I'm proud of you. The system works. Today I submitted another one. 

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

Today, the old bad behavior by Norton 360 vis a vis performance is back. It means that although the service is started, the N360 taskbar icon is the LAST to load during startup. Also during startup, there is high CPU usage by the N360 service (spanning from 20 to 60, sometimes 80%).

The CPU usage window is again loading slow when started the first time after a fresh bootup! 

I have no idea what is causing this. On the first few reboots after the fresh instalation, everything seemed okay, the taskbar icon for N360 was the first to show up...

Now this. I don't know what to make of it. The only difference between now and then is that it has now been running for something like 48 hours post-install, and it has finished most of the tasks (better said, every scheduled task, except the full system scan).

Message Edited by TomiRed on 03-14-2009 04:27 PM

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

This is what that looks like in Norton's own graphics:

Early Load is on, btw. Turning it off (or on, for that matter) makes no difference.

Image resized for better page formatting. 

Message Edited by Mel_V on 05-02-2009 10:40 AM

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

The backup tab on the File properties menu of a succesfully backed up file is empty, no details written in the table.. Is this normal, or should some info be written there?

The overlay icon on it is green.

I hope somebody reads this thread...

[TomiRed Super Spam Squasher]

After the latest install, the boot performance of N 360 is the same as it has been, or worse. I've given up on uninstalling and reinstalling - it doesn't solve the problem, obviously.

Only after a full minute or so of non-stop disk activity and high CPU usage by the N 360 service does the N 360 icon finally show up in the tray, the sidebar gadget goes green and the computer is ready for use. It is hogging everything else!

Curiously, when I just log off and log on - it shows itself in the tray first!  But restart and shutdown - at startup - always the same story!

The CPU Usage window also has a story - it doesn't matter if I click its icon 1 minute, 10 minutes or 4 hours after N 360 startup - it always takes a minimum of 10 seconds to load the first time it is clicked after boot, accompanied with 50% CPU use by the N 360 service. On any subsequent click - it shows up instantly!

Needless to say, I'm baffled. Do you have any tools theat would log what the N 360 service does during startup?