Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus

[yank Trojan Terminator]

The following info is from here:

http://www.sytru.com/support/130

Explaining Silent Mode in Norton 360
 
Norton 360 delivers features to handle viruses and spyware efficiently. During normal operation, Norton 360 displays alerts and notifications to inform you how security issues are detected and resolved.

However, when you play video games or watch movies, you likely prefer not to receive any alert messages. Turning Silent Mode on in Norton 360 suppresses notifications and security alerts while temporarily suspending Norton 360 background activities, so that you can play or watch movies without worry.
 
If Norton 360 detects a security risk when Silent Mode is turned on, it does not display the alert but takes appropriate action in the background to protect your PC.
 
Norton 360 is able to run the following types of Silent Mode:
 •Full Screen Detection
 When you watch full-screen application such as video game, video player or presentation, Norton 360 will automatically turn silent mode on.
 During the time Silent Mode is on, Norton suppresses most of its activities but still protects you against viruses and spyware. When Norton 360 detects that full-screen mode is left it resumes its normal operation and runs the postponed activities.
 
•Silent Mode
 You can manually turn on Silent Mode at any time for a given time of up to 6 hours.
 During the time Silent Mode is on, Norton suppresses most of its activities but still protects you against viruses and spyware. When you manually turn Silent Mode off, Norton 360 resumes its normal operation and runs the postponed activities.

 
If you are concerned about the activities Norton 360 performed during the Silent Mode session, you can review them in the Security History window under Full History. This Silent Mode summary includes the type, time and actions performed during the time when Silent Mode was switched on.

This may be an explaination of what you are experiencing!

[mikedov Regular Contributor]

So Norton will still perform the scan but will not notify you about it.

[twixt Regular Contributor]

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mikedov wrote:

So Norton will still perform the scan but will not notify you about it.

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Hi, mikedov.  No, what is mentioned in the helpfiles is that idle quickscan (along with all other NIS background tasks) is turned off while silent mode is engaged.  However, that information is based on versions of NIS previous to 19.2.

Version 19.2 of NIS has changed the way NIS operates as far as background tasks are concerned.  Idle quickscan under NIS 2012 is now able to "yield" to foreground tasks - and thus an idle quickscan no longer bulls its way to the front of the tasklist and no longer hogs CPU when it is running.  As a result, it is quite safe for idle quickscan to run even in silent mode - since idle quickscan is now quite able to "get out of the way" and allow foreground tasks to run without being lagged by idle quickscan's CPU utilization.

Because of the above improvement, Symantec may have changed the way that idle quickscan operates - in order to take advantage of the new "smarts" in idle quickscan.  This would be a good thing - because users would not be put at risk of having their scans go out-of-date while spending long periods of time in silent mode.

Please note that I am not saying the above is how things are done.  I'm saying that the change mentioned above is possibly an explanation for what you have observed.  It is certainly a reasonable idea - and we need to check with Symantec to determine whether or not the above change has actually been made in reality.  Regardless, the helpfile still reflects the way things were done before 19.2 was released - at least until the helptext is also updated if things now work in the way I've described.

Some other things to note:

1. With the release of Flash 11 and the latest video driver updates with support for Flash 11 hardware acceleration, Flash is no longer the CPU hog it once was - as long as you have qualifying hardware and the latest driver updates.

2. If you have the qualifying hardware and software in place, then it is entirely possible that Flash will run with such a small amount of CPU horsepower engaged that it is quite safe for idle quickscan to run concurrently with the use of Flash.

3. If the above is valid for your situation, then it is possible that the CPU utilization while Flash is in operation will be below the idle-detect threshold for NIS.  This means NIS will consider the machine as "idle" with such a low CPU utilization - and thus allow NIS' idle-style tasks to be performed even though such low-CPU-use tasks are in operation.   If this is the case - then it is perfectly safe and quite acceptable for idle quickscan to run at the same time as a low-CPU-use Flash movie.  There would be no adverse reaction.

4. Further to item 3, even if some other task came along that did use a significant amount of CPU horsepower, the new 19.2-style idle quickscan would yield to that task - and nothing bad would happen regardless.

5. Considering how dangerous it is to allow NIS to become significantly out-of-date, I think it would be a good idea for NIS to be updated to work in the above fashion - now that idle quickscan has "smart yield" capability.

Let's see what Symantec have to say about this.  Hopefully, we will get some sort of response from them indicating yea or nay to the possibilities I've mentioned above.

Hope this helps.

[mikedov Regular Contributor]

Twixt, that is most reasonable. Symantec could have detected the cpu load and ran the scan when it's low. This could be done since most modern cpu can run concurrent tasks and I certainly did not felt the scan on the movie. I only knew about it after I exited full screen mode.