Hello Jerry20, I just wanted to assure you that idle time tasks wont damage your computer. I do persistence testing with NIS, and we have not seen hard drive damage as a result of idle time tasks running in the back round. I have NIS installed on my home laptop and my hard drive has not been damage as a result of that. You can't turn silent mode on permanently because these tasks are necessary to keep NIS up and running and protect your computer from the lastest threats. If there is a problem that is happening during idle time we would be happy to help you narrow down the cause.
Thanks for your reply.
What worries me is when I leave my computer downloading and it goes to idle time and these tasks start accessing the hard drive, so I feel that there is excessive use of the HDD.
Hi Jerry20:
As long as you use NIS 2011 I don't think there's any way you can permanently disable the Norton Insight task. If you stopped running Norton Insight to update the trust ratings for applications, NIS File Insight would refuse to let you download or install any software within a matter of days or weeks because every installation file would appear "untrusted".
You can increase your idle timeout from the default 10 min anywhere up to 30 min from the configuration settings (Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Idle Time Out) or from the Norton Tasks window (Performance | Norton Tasks) as shown below. This will delay any NIS idle time tasks like Norton Insight and give you more time to complete manual downloads that you start yourself (just in case you forget to turn on Silent Mode). However, increasing the idle timeout might not help if you have an extremely slow dial-up Internet connection that takes longer than 30 min to download large files, or if you have software that automatically installs updates when your system is idle.
If you have a slow dial-up connection or want greater control over when most software updates are delivered to your system, install the FileHippo Update Checker and disable automatic updating for any free software you use that can be found on the FileHippo site (e.g., Java, Adobe Flash, Firefox, Foxit PDF Reader, Defraggler, WinRAR, QuickTime, iTunes, etc.). Run the FileHippo Update Checker every few days, and if the FileHippo Update Checker finds an available update then turn on Silent Mode in NIS (if you're downloading a large file), download the installation file from FileHippo or the manufacturer's web site and then run the update manually. I use the FileHippo Update Checker this way myself, but I have a metered 56 Kbps dial-up connection so I use a public WiFi connection when I know that one of my downloads will exceed about 20 MB.
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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
Hi michaell:
Do you know what background Norton tasks still run during system idles if users choose "Critical Updates Only" vs. "No Traffic" with the new Metered Bandwidth feature in NIS 2012 (Settings | Network | Network Security Settings | Metered Broadband Mode | Configure)?
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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
I don't have the list in front of me, but I will post it here once I do, which should be sometime today.
lmacri wrote:
Hi michaell:
Do you know what background Norton tasks still run during system idles if users choose "Critical Updates Only" vs. "No Traffic" with the new Metered Bandwidth feature in NIS 2012 (Settings | Network | Network Security Settings | Metered Broadband Mode | Configure)?
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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
I got the information now. Here is a list of the following things that are turned off if No Traffic is set:
- Norton Insight and Reputation Data
- Download Insight
- Cloud Based Scanning (i.e. Reputation and other cloud based data is not accessed)
- Live Update
- Home Network Map
- Scans still run on their schedule, they just use local cache of reputation data that is store locally on the computer.
Critical Updates:
- Live Update will only download critical updates to the computer
- all back round tasks will still run
Also Norton Error Reporting will only run when traffic policy is set to No Limit
Hi micheall:
Thanks for finding this info on the Metered Bandwidth feature in NIS 2012. I 've been searching for these details ever since NIS 2012 was released.
I'm going to wait a few more weeks until the initial bugs are worked out in NIS 2012 and then I'll give the upgrade a try. Metered Bandwidth sounds like a great feature for people like me who don't have the bandwidth to automatically run all the background Norton tasks on their systems.
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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
Hi Jerry20:
Long time, no hear! 
If you're still interested, Symantec employee viveksu just posted a comment here about a configuration setting that allows you to automatically put NIS into silent mode when a specific program starts running - say your weekly defrag by the WIndows Disk Defragmenter dfrgntfs.exe (Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Quiet Mode on Detection of | User-Specified Programs | Configure).
I wasn't even aware this setting existed in NIS 2011.
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Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2011 v. 18.6.0.29 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 6.0.0
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
Thank you all for your generous help.
lmacri, I think your last suggestion is just what I need, I'll try to add the download program to this list, and I'll tell you what happens.
Thanks
lmacri wrote:Hi Jerry20:
Long time, no hear!
If you're still interested, Symantec employee viveksu just posted a comment here about a configuration setting that allows you to automatically put NIS into silent mode when a specific program starts running - say your weekly defrag by the WIndows Disk Defragmenter dfrgntfs.exe (Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Quiet Mode on Detection of | User-Specified Programs | Configure).
I wasn't even aware this setting existed in NIS 2011.
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Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2011 v. 18.6.0.29 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 6.0.0
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS
Thank you very much.
That's exactly what I need.
Hi Jerry20:
Just to make sure, there are actually three settings in your configuration you might want to check.
As far as I can tell, Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Quiet Mode on Detection of | User-Specified Programs | Configure will only suspend background Norton Tasks if the user-specified program runs during system idles - say a long disk defrag by your Windows Disk Defragmenter (dfrgntfs.exe) that continues to run after you walk away from your computer and your system goes into idle mode. In combination with an increased Idle Timeout setting, Quiet Mode can decrease the CPU utilization of your system by background Norton tasks like an Idle Full System Scan when your system is idle. Quiet Mode isn't going to help if you add a program that you normally run while you're working at your computer - say a resource-intensive computer game - that performs lots of disk read/writes and uses high amounts of CPU.
Make sure that Full Screen Detection is turned on in your Silent Mode settings (Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Silent Mode Settings | Full Screen Detection | ON). This ensures that NIS will turn on Silent Mode automatically when it detects an application that runs in full screen mode. See PapuaZ's post here - full screen mode is not the same as having an application running in a maximized window.
If you keep getting annoying performance alerts popping up while you're working on your computer because you are running a computer game or other program that consumes lots of CPU/Memory/Disk/Handles, you can suppress these alerts at Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Performance Monitoring | Performance Alerting and Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Performance Monitoring | Program Exclusions. If you set Performance Alerting to Log Only, performance alerts will not pop up in your system tray but they will continue to be logged in your security history. And if you add that program to the Programs Exclusions, this will supress the performance alerts for that particular program. Unlike Quiet Mode, however, configuring your performance alerts won't actually decrease your CPU/Memory/Disk/Handles usage.
I'm really glad you posted your question in the forum. I'm actually learning a lot myself as we work through this.
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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
In Nis 2012
Turning off or turning on Idle Time Optimizer
Norton Internet Security automatically schedules the optimization when it detects the installation of a new application on your computer. Norton Internet Security runs this optimization only when your computer is idle.
You can use the Idle Time Optimizer option to optimize the boot volume during idle time. By default, this option is turned on.
To turn off Idle Time Optimizer
In the Norton Internet Security main window, click Settings.
In the Settings window, click the General tab.
In the left pane, click Norton Tasks.
In the Idle Time Optimizer row, move the On/Off switch to the right to the Off position.
Click Apply, and then click OK.
To turn on Idle Time Optimizer
In the Norton Internet Security main window, click Settings.
In the Settings window, click the General tab.
In the left pane, click Norton Tasks.
In the Idle Time Optimizer row, move the On/Off switch to the left to the On position.
Click Apply, and then click OK.
try here