Comcast Norton wakes computer from Screensaver

Hello,

 

I am newer here and perhaps not as technical as some, but I seem to have a problem that is related to this one.  I will give some history to set benchmarking.  I am running an HP pavilion dv4000.  Earlier today I checked my memory.  My Computer says 1.99 GB RAM, running Windows XP service pack 3

 

I got the Comcast version of Norton on April 25th.  Prior, I was using an old educational version of McAfee, Spybot, AdAware, AdWatch, and Malawarebytes.  The unload/reload got complicated by these facts.  I found a phone number on Comcast that allowed me to talk to a nice guy in the Philippines.  He remotely unloaded the competing software and loaded Norton.

 

The next morning I ran a full system scan.  Nothing was found other than tracking cookies.  The benchmarks: 2 hours 20 minutes, 1.214 million files scanned

 

Not too much to report until May 28th.  The only thing to note was that I had the same loop mentioned here:  The screen saver would start (Starfield), the computer/Norton interpreted that as "idle", the Norton background processes would start, the popup window would popup stopping the screen saver, the computer/Norton would interpret this as activity cancelling the background process, in a few minutes repeat!  I basically ignored it and just didn't have a screen saver for a month.

 

Friday the 28th was different.  Apparently, Norton got mad that I had not run another full system scan in more than some amount of time (True).  It decided to run one as background.  This caused my computer to max out the cycles and run the fan for hours.  I could slowly play solitaire or read some message boards.  After four hours, I quit all software allowing nothing but the background to run - although I am not sure it was running - for 45 more minutes.  I have no access to the number of files scanned on the Background version of the full scan.  I decided to quit and go to bed.

 

Saturday the 29th, I woke up, booted, started no software except Norton and initiated a full scan in the Foreground.  I knew that a successful scan would create a timestamp to stop the background problem temporarily.  Unfortunately, I am not sure that it was not running a background full scan at the same time.  In any case, it was much slower.  After 4 hours, I was only 220,000 files in with a million to go.  Furthermore, it had slowed to a pace where I was able to read the file numbers change individually to someone I was talking to on the phone.  220,963 scanned...220,964 scanned.  Clearly this would take days to run, plus my computer would burnout by then!  I shut down and tried again.  This time, it slowed to almost a halt at a mere 29,000 files.

 

I called Symantec and talked to three agents (at first, there will be a fourth later on).  Most of them didn't seem to understand my history or the problem.  The third one helped me to go into regedit (probably a mistake) and change one value that he claimed should help solve the problem from 0 to 1.  For a short while, the speed was better, but in reality nothing much changed (more on this in two paragraphs).

 

I called again and talked to the fourth guy.  He told me how to shut off all background processes.  I followed the instructions and the fourth icon on the main Norton page is now gray.  There should be no background processes.  I restarted and things seemed fine... for a while.  About 15 minutes in, ccsvchst.exe started using up all my cycles, running my fan at max.  I checked Norton and the screen still claimed that background was shut off.  But it would never stop running.  Somehow, Norton was trying to do something (what?) in the background and it was never finishing. 

 

I did notice one thing however that is true until now and was probably the aforementioned 'better period'.  After starting up, if I kept the foreground busy, the ccsvchst never took over all my cycles.  I tested it for an hour, playing games, moving the mouse, listening to YouTube, checking mail.  As long as it never went idle, I was fine.  If I allowed the computer to go idle, the ccsvchst would start its nasty business.  And once it started down that path, the only way to stop it is to shut down.  I've done the start-up/keep it busy/intentionally go idle/watch ccsvchst go carzy cycle another five times today.

 

The Windows Task Manager Performance tab window is quite pretty when ccsvchst goes crazy.  The overall performace probably averages about 75% of my processors ability, but it is an interesting sinelike wave.  It goes up and down (like a sine wave) but the metawave is like a sonic wave: it gets fatter and skinnier.  Also, every once in a while, it will go to 100% for a minute or two then return to the sine behavior, but it never ends.  Currently, I am about 3 hours in and it keeps doing it.

 

By the way, I can't seem to figure out how to change the idle time - I actually can't find a reference to the idle time - so I can't change it to less than my screen saver's three minutes.  Not that I believe that such a change will stop my problem.  I give it 50/50 that if I could complete a full scan that all of the bad behavior would go away...at least until a week (a month?) later when I better have run one again!

 

I will check this thread over the next few days to see what people think.  It is a long weekend here in the US, so I need to give some time.  Also I will be traveling at midweek for a couple weeks, so I might not get back quickly.  Thanks for any help.

 

Sorry I typed so much,

 

Zelski (someone else is pogo here!)

 

[edit: Edit subject to reflect moved post.]

As an update:

 

Today I decided to try an experiment based on some things I mentioned in my previous post.  I started up and began a full scan.  For the entire period of the scan (2 hours 20 minutes) I moved the mouse every so often (more often than once a minute).  The full scan ran and looked at 1.432 million files.  (I gave 1.214 for the last one but I must have misremembered 1.414 million.  I probably thought that 1.414 was me remembering the square root of 2, so I changed it to 1.214).  Anyway, I succesfully ran a backup, so my time stamp should show me as good.  But I am not.  When I was done, I let the computer go idle and ccsvchst went nuts again.  As I type this, it is using up most of my processors ability running something in the background that I cannot determine.

 

Also, after looking further at the menus in Norton, I am not sure that I believe the agent I spoke to who told me how to shut off background tasks.  Yes, that menu is still gray, and yes that happened because I shifted to manual scheduling, but on the list of tasks, I see no mention of changing the scheduling of Full Scan as a Background Task.

 

I am reaching the belief that the only thing I can do is uninstall Norton.  Since I have no other anti-virus at this time, I would probab ly try to re-install it afterward.  To do this, I will have to contact Comcast, as I am not sure of their protocols for this.  They might think I am trying to 'steal' a free install or something.

Hi Zelski,

 

Please bear in mind that I am using Norton Internet Security 2010 and not the Comcast Norton Security Suite (CNSS) that you are using.  That said some of the settings may be different for you.

 

 

I would suggest the first thing you do is flip your splash page to show the Performance.  On CNSS that is accomplished by clicking on the "turn around arrow" (from lack of a better term), located in the lower right hand corner.  The splash page should turn over and give you something similiar to this

 

 

The lower chart will show you when your system is in idle, CPU Memory useage, Norton useage and if it works the same as my NIS, then you can move the red pointer with your mouse and left click on a point and it will display what services are running.

 

 

This may aid you in locating what is running in the background.

 

 

My NIS also has a setting for Idle Time out under the Miscellaneous Settings.  The default is 10 minutes and can be set anywhere from 1 to 30 minutes.  I would suggest you check Help and Support, typing Idle Time Out into the index.

 

If you decide to remove and reinstall CNSS.  I would suggest removing it thru add/remove programs, then downloading and running the Norton Removal Tool twice with a reboot after each run of the NRT.

 

 

You can then go here and click on Get It Now.  That will take you to the CNSS download site and you will be able to download a fresh CNSS install and install it as you originally did.  It should not question you in regards to other installs.

 

 

Please post back with the results,  anything more you have experimented with, or any questions you may have about the remove and reinstall of CNSS.

 

 

 

Same problem here. running vers. 17.7.0.12

 

My idle time is set to two minutes, screen saver for five minutes, I don't think the power save for my monitor matters as it has not reached that point in nearly two weeks. I have run four full system scans, two of which were completion of the idle time scans. The problem persists. I even changed idle scans to once a month and ran all the needed scans. My monitor will still NOT, I repeat, NOT turn off. I have to turn my monitor off manually so it does not wake me in the night. This is severely annoying!

Hello Mustang67_88

 

Welcome to the Norton Users Discussion Forum

 

There is a very long thread about this over in the NAV/NIS section of the Forum

 

http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/Norton-Internet-Security-wakes-computer-from-Screensaver/td-p/194720

 

If you have the time, perhaps you may want to read thru that thread. It is a rather long thread.

That thread led me to this one at the very end

Since I noticed early in the past week that a new update 17.7.0.12 came through, I reset my idle timeout to > than screensaver and ss has been working great.  Thank you Norton techies.

 

Just one little glitch.  My full system scan started automatically about 5 hrs after previous weekly scan and stopped midway.  No, Reese, I was not near the computer to create some disturbance (wasn't that conversation months ago?).  Screensaver did stay on (for the first time since Jan. during automatic scan - TY) and computer remained idle for another 45 min. to an hour but status showed cancelled.  So off computer I went and scan did re-engage to completion.  Hopefully, just a one time aberration.

 

Thank you all.

Hello again,

 

I was traveling for the last two weeks, so I didn't get a chance to reply.  I have a few small notes on this problem.

 

I have run my computer on some else's network since I last posted.  First it was a friend's home access.  The problem occurred.  Then I ran the machine on a university network where I know people that work in Residential Access.  The problem occurred.  Each time I showed the folks I knew the pretty EKG-like pattern.

 

My idle time is set  (under Administrative Settings) at 10 minutes.  Ever since I last posted, my screen saver is set at 60 minutes.  Prior to my last post, my screen saver was set at 3 minutes.  So, I have tried it both ways (screensaver < idle time, screen saver > idle time) and in both cases I had the problem.

 

I had seen the Performance Page that yank pointed me too.  I am very glad he told me how to find it again, though, as I didn't know how I had gotten it before!  The next time the problem occurs, I will look there to see if I can learn what Norton is doing.  I will also try to get a screen shot of the EKG.  However, even if get one, I don't know if I can post it here.

 

Further reading in other places makes me wonder if Norton is trying to defrag my disk in the background and never getting finished.  One of the Administrative Settings descriptions says that it might be doing some kind of defrag.  Of course, that's just a thought, I have no evidence.  I do know that my built-in defrag recommends against my defragging as it is unneccessary - I have almost nothing on my machine.

Hello Zelski

 

You can use Paint to save the picture and then use the little tree in the bar where you type your posts here. It's the 3rd one to the right of the smilie. It will take a while for the mods to approve the ss before we will be able to see it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I looked again at the 'turn around arrow' graph that yank pointed to.  Just like he said, when I moved over the graph, it told me what services were running.  Unfortunately, the only service listed when the strange events happen is ccsvchst.exe, which I already knew from Windows File Manager.

 

I also took floplot's advice and used Microsoft Paint to save my screen dump as a jpg.  I will try to post it.

This is my attempt to post the jpg:

 

6155iB2150A94C98F5542

That picture is almost as good as the real one.  It's a bit narrower, so making out the lines can be tough, but you can still make out the sine wave-like pattern and the meta-pattern that I recently started calling the EKG.