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Identify my device - and the wisdom of using the Classic interface

I have recently struggled through something on Norton 360 for Windows, and I wanted to share what I found.

N360 says I have 9 devices protected.  I know some of these are dead laptops, and I can harvest and repurpose the licenses on other machines.  But which licenses are on dead machines??

I think the only way to find this out is to go to each available machine where I've installed N360, and find out what its device name is, to check off the ones on the list that Norton shows.  Once I eliminate the legit machines, I can remove licenses from the dead machines.

A background problem is that Norton picks 'junk' names when it gets installed.  Like 'DESKTOP-JK21JK3' or whatever - nothing that is meaningful, like 'BOB', or 'DELLXPS' or whatever.  I don't know why Norton doesn't just use the actual Windows machine name (even as a subtitle or comment or something), or give you an option to name it at install time.

So, in the default N360 app interface 'MyNorton', in Help -> Search Support, I searched for 'device identity', and it said the following:

On Windows devices, on the main product window, click Help, and under General Information, click About. You can find the device name displayed there.

But, alas, there was no 'About' entry in 'Help' in the main window of MyNorton.  This started a couple of hours of frustrated digging through the N360 app, the Norton web site, and even the Community pages, and nothing I could find would help.  The above instruction was repeated in a couple of places, but it didn't help me.  I even spent 30 minutes in online Chat support, and though the person tried hard, he didn't really seem to understand my question. 

The 'Aha!' moment was when I realized that the instruction quoted above was based on the Classic interface, not the MyNorton interface (which seems to be the default?)  Once I went to Settings in MyNorton, and changed the launch behavior to 'Classic' from 'MyNorton' and restarted, the Help menu had an About entry, which told me the current device's name.  Hurray!

In fact, in the Community fora, I saw a couple of other posts that talked about more sophisticated settings for N360 like 'Remote Management' - again, these are only available in Settings if you go through the Classic interface.  If you go to Settings in MyNorton, there are just a couple of trivial things (but very importantly: Launch mode, where you can switch to Classic!)

So, to summarize:

  1. users should use the Classic interface (IMHO)   More powerful, and the online docs (and many Community posts) assume you do.
  2. Norton technical writers should make sure every time an instruction references something in the Classic interface, that it starts off with "Make sure you are using the Classic interface"
  3. Norton developers should provide a clear link from MyNorton to the gold mine of Classic - even just something like an 'Advanced View' button to take you there.

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Re: Identify my device - and the wisdom of using the Classic interface

Link to another similar discussion here (but which omits the gem about the Classic interface)

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Re: Identify my device - and the wisdom of using the Classic interface

Norton developers should provide a clear link from MyNorton to the gold mine of Classic - even just something like an 'Advanced View' button to take you there.

It is not a clear link, but clicking on Open beside Device Security in the My Norton interface takes you to the classic interface.

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Re: Identify my device - and the wisdom of using the Classic interface

Ah, that's funny!  I looked at the other items down that pulldown and didn't see anything helpful, but I never tried 'Open'.  :-)

As you say, not obvious, but thanks @peterweb for the tip anyways!

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Re: Identify my device - and the wisdom of using the Classic interface

I've been confused about the dual interfaces myself. Why in the world isn't there simply one? 

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Re: Identify my device - and the wisdom of using the Classic interface

I think the My Norton UI is mainly for pushing extra products and services.

Windows 10 x64 22H2 | Mint Cinnamon 21.2
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Re: Identify my device - and the wisdom of using the Classic interface

From the Settings panel in My Norton view, you can select which of the two options you want to open each time by default.

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Re: Identify my device - and the wisdom of using the Classic interface

Yes, but I think a redesign is in order. One intuitive, appealing, fresh new interface. It's crazy to have 2 distinctly different interfaces on the same PC. Like Krusty13 alludes to, MY Norton is mostly just a built-in adverisment. Really not needed for a PC Security program.

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