CANNOT Remove Norton Anti-Virus

Norton Security | Norton Internet Security
1

I need to get Norton off my computer -- and I cannot. 

 

At first, I thouight the problem was my MS Office (XP) suite. The program was just freezing every time I tried to open it. I went through and cleared up memory, un-installed and re-installed the program.  Then, I realized the problem: MS Office programs will open and allow me to create new documents, but if I try to open an older document, the message "requesting virus scan" appears across the bottom of the program and then it freezes.

 

After plenty of time troubleshooting, I'm pretty there is a problem between my old Norton Anti-Virus program (which is long out of date anyway -- I don't even know what version it is) and MS Office, seeing as Office has no built-in virus scanning. I've spent about eight hours now trying to remove Norton -- going through the control panel, even downloading the removal tool from Symantec which claims it should remove -- but no luck. Norton refuses to leave! Everyone keeps claiming the remove tool will work, but it refuses to do so on my computer -- it opens, but it does not actually run.

Do you have any suggestions for what else I might try?  A way to loosen the grip of Norton on the computer? As a teacher, I NEED to access MS Office daily, and Norton is making this impossible

2

Hi Teacher831,


Welcome to Norton Community!


Try to start your computer in Safe Mode, and then run the Norton Removal Tool. Let us know how it goes.


Yogesh

3

Hi teacher831:

 

Welcome to the Norton Community!

 

Kindly download the Norton Removal Tool from this source and run it. (read the document, first)

 

Let us know if it makes a difference.

 

Thanks.

4

Hi Teacher

 

You mentioned that your Norton was way out of date. Are you currently running any other antivirus program or any other security program live time? Are you running spybot with Tea Timer on?  You may have malware on yout computer which is preventing the NRT from running correctly.  I would suspect that you may have a rogue antivirus program in your computer and that is what is telling you to run a scan. I don't think that Norton would tell you to run a scan when you open up Office.

 

I would suggest running a full scan with the free version of Malwarebytes and then post the log here.

 

Download the free version, install and update then run a FULL scan. After the scan completes you should post the logs back to this thread.

You can find Malwarebytes here

http://www.filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/

It is a safer location to get the program from than malwarebytes themselves because the malware writers some times block the security programs' websites.

5

I've tried all versions of using the removal tool -- the Safe Mode AND the link posted. No luck. Norton is screwing me.

 

I'm going to try to do the malware now..I'll post a message once we see how it goes.

6

Hi teacher831,

 

Are you sure this is Norton Antivirus and not Symantec Corporate?  The corporate edition has a much trickier removal process and it would be necessary to confirm the exact version you have.  Assuming, for now, that it is a Norton product you should be able to disable the Automatic Office files scan until we can figure out how to remove the program.  Since we don't know what version you are using, you should look in the Norton Help program in your version under the topics of Office plug-in or Office scans.  There you should find a description of how to turn this feature off, which will stop the "Requesting virus scan" messages.  But ultimately, you do need to replace your dated software with something designed to handle the more sophisticated threats that have arisen in the last few years.