Norton Family

[chrispaulh]

I go to Program and Features in the control panel. I find Norton Safety Minder (v 2.3.0.18) and click the Uninstall/Change button, but absolutely nothing happens. I click Norton Online (v 2.3.0.7) and a dialogue comes up saying I need password to uninstall, but there is no place to put it, and the continue button doesn't work. I need to uninstall this to use the Norton removal tool to remove my Norton 360 to replace with new Norton Internet Security. Solutions?

[KatieQ]

Hi chrispaulh,

To uninstall Norton Safety Minder without account information, please remove the network cable first then try to uninstall/reinstall NSM.  For details, please read the post at  http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Online-Family/Cannot-Uninstall-Saftey-Minder/m-p/123630/highli... .

Thanks,

Katie

[chrispaulh]

I have read this before I posted, unfortunaltely in my post I said when I click to uninstall NOTHING happens with or without a connection to the internet. So this isn't a solution.

[KatieQ]

chrispaulh,

Please try the following steps.  When you try to install Norton Safety Minder, the system will uninstall the existing version first.  After you have the correct installation, then uninstall it.

http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Online-Family/Norton-Safety-Minder-is-not-getting-installed/m-...

Thanks,

Katie

[medievalclaire]

I had the same issue, I tried uninstalling Norton Safety Minder, and nothing would happen. Literally, nothing at all. I used the Windows Add/Remove Programs, and when that did not work, I tried using the CCleaner uninstaller. Still nothing happened. One post from a Norton person was to delete the folder containing the files, but that does not actually uninstall anything, it just removes the folder.  Deleting folders in lieu of uninstalling is not recommended because it still leaves pieces of the program in your computer's registry, therefore deleting folders IS NOT uninstalling a product, which is what everyone seems to want to do.

After a lot of goggling, I have found a handy little tool that let's you force uninstall any program, even if something is blocking it from being uninstalled. It is called Revo Uninstaller, and it is free. Feel free to Google the product, there are many valid websites that support it, and it is, of course, spyware free. 

http://download.cnet.com/Revo-Uninstaller/3000-2096_4-10687648.html

I don't know if it makes a difference, but before I uninstalled using Revo, I went to the Norton Safety Minder website and unsubscribed from the service. After that, I tried again to uninstall via Windows and CCleaner, with the same results as before. 

I hope this helps everyone!

[medievalclaire]

I feel I must explain the reasons why I am unhappy with this product, so hopefully Norton can fix these issues. I would first like to say that Safety Minder is a great idea, and I was really excited when I read about its features and everything it was supposed to do. 

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Its not just a few bugs here or there, the product simply does not do what it is supposed to. 

1. EVERY DAY, my daughter and I would be sitting side by side on the couch with our laptops, and I would get an email saying Safety Minder was turned off. It was not turned off. I could just lean over, move her mouse, and check the icon, which I did. I got so many of those emails every day, that I stopped paying attention. 

2. It does not monitor chat conversations, which was the main reason I subscribed to this product. There was an option to monitor Facebook, and any chats she had, and I could also block specific users. This feature never once worked, and I have had Safety Minder installed since December 2011. 

3. A reminder window would constantly pop up on my daughter's desktop, reminding her that she is being monitored. What is the point of this? I am her parent and it is none of her business if I want to monitor the laptop that I bought her. I am perfectly fine with the warning window popping up when she gets close to her time limit, but that is all I want. There needs to be more customization available.

4. It does not correctly monitor anything that she does. Most of the time, I will be sitting right next to her while she is online, and she will show me something that she is looking at. But when I go to the Safety Minder site and look at her activity, its not there. I can't trust this product to give me accurate information. 

5. Inability to uninstall. Even if a product does everything it is supposed to do, if it won't install, THEN IT DOESN'T WORK. There is absolutely no reason that this many people are having trouble uninstalling. I couldn't uninstall using the file in the Safety Minder folder that said "uninstall". Windows couldn't uninstall it, and neither could CCleaner. There is no excuse for this. I realize that you are trying to keep children who are being monitored from uninstalling the product, but there are better ways then simply not allowing the product to be uninstalled. 

6. Norton forums are not helpful. I have never been the biggest fan of Norton products (thanks for taking over my firewall when I don't want you to, and then constantly giving me warning messages when I tell you to stop), but I was willing to let you redeem yourselves with Safety Minder because I really believed it was a great and innovative product. However, the people you have answering your forums are not helping people. If you insist that you have tried all of their solutions, and you still can't uninstall, they insist that it could not possibly be the product, but either you or your computer. I realize it is their job not to bad mouth the product, but when this many people are having the same issue, and nothing is working, we know its you, and not us. Have the decency to at least admit there might be a "bug" or a "known issue". 

[KatieQ]

H medievalclaire,

Thanks for taking the time to write us.  We're grateful for your ideas and suggestions.

1. Please let us know what exact message you get.  Is the Norton Safety Minder disabled message or the plug-in for Norton Safety Minder gets disabled.  

If it’s about Norton Safety Minder disabled, this could happen if a PC takes a quite long time to reboot.  When NSM checks for service and it is not ready yet, the program sends out the alert message.  However, Norton Safety Minder checks service every 5 minutes, if it is down for some reason, the service will be restarted again automatically.

If it’s about plug-in for Norton Safety Minder gets disabled, please check the browser(s) that your child uses to see if the Norton Safety Minder add-ons is enabled.  You can find it by clicking Tools -> Manage Add-ons in IE or Tools -> Add-ons in Firefox.  Even though the add-on is turned off, the program still monitors and blocks  websites.  

2.  Norton Online Family supports following Instant Messengers to monitor Instant Messaging activity for your child. 

• Yahoo Messenger

• MSN Messenger

• Windows Live Messenger (The program doesn't support the 2011 Windows Live Messenger client  currently)

• AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) - (Note: AIM 7.0 is currently not supported.)

• Google Talk

Note: Norton Online Family does not support Web browser based clients of Instant Messengers listed above. Currently, Norton Online Family supports Instant Messengers only on Windows. Instant Messengers on Mac are not supported.

3  Some parental controls products use a "stealth" mode and monitor a child’s activity in secret.  These features could be misused to monitor other adults.  For the product of Norton Online Family,  the team wants to encourage discussion between parents and kids, and we want to be sure that the product can't be used against other adults without their knowledge.  That's why the program shows the pop-up account being monitored message.   I understand why you feel it’s tiresome,   I’ll pass your suggestion to the team to see if they can edit the feature in some way in the future release.

4.   It normally takes a few minutes for the activity logs to get updated at Manage Activity -> Web online.  If  these activities have never shown up on the page, please  provide me a couple of the URLs of these websites and we will check into these.  Please feel free to send me a private message via the forum if you prefer to sent them to me privately.

5.  Please check out the two links below and they should help you to uninstall the program if you can’t remove the program from Control Panel.

To uninstall Norton Safety Minder without account information, please remove the network cable first then try to uninstall/reinstall NSM.  For details, please read the post at  http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Online-Family/Cannot-Uninstall-Saftey-Minder/m-p/123630/highli... .

Or try the following steps.  After uninstalling/reinstalling  Norton Safety Minder as indicated in the link,  you should have the correct installation, then uninstall the Norton Safety Minder again.

http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Online-Family/Norton-Safety-Minder-is-not-getting-installed/m-...

6.  I’m sorry I could have misunderstood you, but it sounds to me you are talking about, or partially about other Norton security products because Norton Online Family doesn’t take over a user’s firewall.   The forum was designed to help our users with any Norton Online Family issues, and collect suggestions and ideas from parents for improvements and new functionality.   If you feel any issues that need to be addressed, please let us know.  

Thanks again for your feedback and helping us to improve our product and service.

 Katie