Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus

[avjohnnie]

This now makes for my third (unsuccessful) attempt at “upgrading?” from NIS2011 to NIS2012.

Everything always starts off fine and remains so for a day or two. Then this unusual high CPU utilization behavior starts. This always occurs after a Liveupdate triggers a quick background scan. Moving the mouse or tapping a key causes the “Quickscan completed” popup to slide in at the lower right corner of the screen, yet the high CPU utilization continues at approx. 45% to 50% on the ccSvcHst.exe as shown in this screen capture.

This heavy CPU usage continues for another half to three-quarters of an hour and there's nothing I can do to halt it. I’ve tried using task manager to end the ccSvcHst.exe process as well as the entire ccSvcHst.exe process tree. Trying to do so only produces an access permission denial message. I can reboot the computer which will cause the Windows7 "waiting for tasks to shutdown" screen to hang onscreen for the remainding duration of whatever it is that ccSvcHst.exe is up to.

FWIW: I can instantly resolve this problem by reverting to NIS2011.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

John Burns,

Software Research

[delphinium Norton Fighter]

The second image looks like a full system scan.  I'm wondering if you happened to over-install 2011 while it was in the middle of running a weekly full system scan.  Have you tried completely removing NIS from your system, running the removal tool and then installing NIS2012 instead of an upgrade?

[avjohnnie]

Yes I have, however doing so leads to the “Device connect failure” warning beeps referred to in another message thread in this forum (located here): Strange sounds at startup ("Device Failed to Connect" sound).  And after all that, the original high CPU issue remains unaltered/unimproved after the full reinstallation is completed + the newly induced beep problem each time the system is booted.

Regards,

John Burns

Software Research

[delphinium Norton Fighter]

That occurrs even after removing the program first via add/remove before running the tool?  You can also do the removal in safe mode, which might leave your drivers intact if they are not loaded.

[avjohnnie]

No - the "Beep" condition does not occur if I simply use Windows7 Control Panel "Programs and Features" to remove NIS2012.  However it does occur if I use Norton Removal Tool but not until I reinstall NIS2012.  This happens regardless of the combination or order used - safe mode or otherwise, with or without first using control panel to uninstall - if the Norton Removal Tool is used and NIS2012 is then reinstalled (after previously being installed) the "Beep" condition will occur.  Uninstalling NIS2012 again ends the warning “Beep”.  Also note that there are no devices tagged as being “Unknown”, or “Missing Drivers / Components” in Windows Device Manager, yet the warning "Beep" persists on boot, and just as the other poster reported, always with three separate and distinct "Beep" occurrences, each occurrence separated by a few seconds during the boot process.  Also note that the high CPU utilization problem returns again as soon as NIS2012 is reinstalled.

And another "new revelation" I (just) found is that uninstalling NIS2012 seems to somehow disable the NIS2011 Junk Mail (toolbar) office plugin in Outlook2010.

[avjohnnie]

We’ve managed to solve all of the numerous NIS2012 problems that we’ve been encountering on our three NIS2012 “testing systems” for the last couple of weeks by simply reverting them all back to NIS2011... To do this successfully however, all three required complete HD system image restorations to pre-NIS2012 exposure point – this was necessary since NIS2012 simply cannot be uninstalled cleanly and using the Norton Removal Tool further complicates the issues left behind by NIS2012’s removal. All said and done though, all three system are once again behaving normally.

Regards,

John Burns

Software Research

[avjohnnie]

I want to further clarify my previous post.  It may have sounded like reverting to NIS2011 then back to NIS2012 was our ultimate solution. It was not.

We have reverted to NIS2011 and stayed on NIS2011 to solve these various problems.  We also intend to continue using NIS2011 until we begin to see some postings here indicating that Symantec has managed to solve some of the more major issues with NIS2012.

Regards,

John Burns

Software Research

[lmacri Super Phishing Phryer]

Hi everyone:

I have a hypothetical question regarding the screenshot in message # 1, since it's possible that we have another user here in the forum having the same problem.

Is it possible that this spike in CPU activity by ccSvcHst.exe was caused by the NIS real-time protection or heuristic detection and has nothing to do with a background idletime Norton Task?  For instance,  if there's a scheduled task on the computer (e.g., a Malwarebytes' Anit-Malware scan) and the .exe or .dll file is untrusted by NIS, wouldn't the real-time protection in NIS crank up and simultaneously run in the background monitoroing the suspicious CPU/Memory/Disk/Handles?

If the high CPU activity shown in message # 1 is caused by a background task like a Idle Quick Scan, I would expect that clicking on that region of the graph would show ccSvcHst.exe as the only active process and that the Last Run date in the Norton Tasks window would correspond to the time the high CPU occurred. I see a bit of blue (non-Norton) overlaying the yellow Norton peaks in that screen shot in message # 1 which indicates to me that some other process besides ccSvcHst.exe was also using CPU.

I can't figure out if the new Norton Job Scheduler in NIS 2012 is having problems detecting when the system comes out of idle mode now that NIS 2012 is no longer using the Windows Task Scheduler to schedule Norton tasks (despite the claim that the Norton Job Scheduler "does an excellent job of detecting idle time" in the article What's New in Norton Internet Security 2012 - see section on Custom Scans the Norton Way) or if there's something odd with the NIS Insight application trust ratings or real-time protection / heuristic detection that causes NIS 2012 to behave very aggressively with certain applications.

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Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2011 v. 18.6.0.29 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 6.0
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS

[Atomic_Blast Super Spam Squasher Mobile Master (Norton Mobile Users Discussion Forum)]

Hi.

Perhaps the different threads need to be merged.

See - http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/NIS-2012-too-much-background-activity...

I do not see a real "solution" here.

Atomic_Blast :)

[lmacri Super Phishing Phryer]

Hi Atomic_Blast:

I'm still not sure we're dealing with the same issue in both posts.  LX3 still hasn't finished investigating if ccSvcHst.exe is causing the high CPU usage here and is just assuming that an unfinished Idle Quick Scan is the culprit

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Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2011 v. 18.6.0.29 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 6.0
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS