OK - I've had this laptop for over 3years now and have had a Norton product the whole time. I am an extremely safe "surfer" and never click on anything or download anything....other than the latest Norton. I had major problems with Norton for the past week or so and have spent a total of 3 days and 10 hours, talking with IT, Supervisors and Engineers attempting to fix it. They allegedly scanned my PC (remote access) and found nothing.
Yesterday my PC crashed and wouldn't even boot in safe mode. I took it to the shop and they found 2 worms and 2 trojans, which had corrupted some operating files. As a result some bad sectors were on the hard drive as well!!!!!!
It took them from 9am to 6pm, working on it all day, to retrieve my data. I spent $195 to get a new hard drive (upgraded from 160 to 320) and spent another $234 to run the diagnostic, clean the infections and transfer the data to the new hard drive (not bad for an entire day's work).
My question: WHY should I reinstall my Norton360 premier? It is apparently worthless. The guys at the shop felt the same way and suggested McAfee 2010. I said that I always felt Norton was better and they said that was true for previous versions. However, they said the 2010 version of McAfee is far superior to anything out there. My brother in law, who is currently doing his Phd in Computer Sciences (specializing in Networks) also suggested McAfee or Kaspersky.
I have 321 days left on my Norton subscription but am thinking that if I reinstall and have a rerun of this scenario it will cost me more than just switching to one of the others (as it already has).
I would ask a Symantec employee to let me know what my options are i.e. can I get my $$ back or what?
Nothing you use for security will stop a trojan or serious threat 100% of the time. Remember,too, that some repair shops get perks for pushing certain security products, just like certain (unnamed) stores push phone plans and badmouth others. DON'T believe suggestions you hear there, they are repairmen, not experts on security. Do a comprehensive online comparison and choose what you like. Also, run your product in safe mode, it catches more that way. As for Norton 360 4.0, I just got it as an upgrade and somehow the logins will NOT store in Norton, even after 3 remote sessions. A brand new computerwith Windows 7, and Norton 360 3.0 wouldn't store logins either. Think Windows 7 only 99.9% compatible with Norton at this time. But otherwise its an easy, trustworthy, respected product, and I'll just live without auto login. To get a trojan you must have opened something, an e-mail that looked like it came from a trusted source, or a web site that had it embedded in it. I remember how one music site had a trojan in it and didn't know it. It's life, unscripted ( sorry, had to say it). You can get two products and run one one time and the other the next, too. I have Norton and System Mechanic Pro, and love them both. Good luck.
I will leave any financial dealings to the Symantec reps, but in answer to your other questions:
1. We can all become infected at any time, anywhere, using any of the common security software. The malware is written first by writers as professional, sometimes, as the security developers. Some of the third generation rootkits have gone through five version changes in a month. The software developers then have to catch up and try to find a way to stop them without locking down our machines to the point that we can't use them. Not easy.
2. There is no such thing as safe surfing any more. At one time, only porn sites were a problem, P2P sharing is still a problem, and email threats. Now, however, script injections can be found on what we would expect to be safe responsible sites. Since Java is script and we have to use it to do anything, it is also difficult to lock out. Firefox with NoScript is safer than Internet Explorer, but it does irritate some people when half a web page is left out.
3. Everybody has their own preferred antivirus software. I have used McAfee, I use Trend Micro on my employers machine, and I have looked at Comodo. They all work very hard at it, they all have different short-comings, but I still prefer a Norton product on my own personal machines. The product reviews would tend to indicate a bit of bias on the part of the people you talked to. Before making any changes to your software, check out the support forums first to see what the user complaints are. I think you will find many are the same, and some are worse.
4. If you decide to remove Norton, do come back and see us for the correct removal tool to prevent further problems with sofware conflicts. Antivirus software is sticky and fussy.
Please remember that the repairmen at these shops are there to earn a living repairing computers with malware on them.. Have they kept a written chart showing the security programs on the machines that they have had to fix and how many and which security programs they are running. Have you seen any comparisons of the success rates of the various security programs out there? If these security programs were 100 % effective all the time, they would be out of business since there would be no malware to clean up. Please remember that the malware writers are always ahead of any security program out there and they have access to all the different security programs out there also and will make their malware so that it can't be detected by antivirus software.
If you look at the forums in those other companies, I am sure you will find people complaining there also about malware getting thru their software also.
OK - I've had this laptop for over 3years now and have had a Norton product the whole time. I am an extremely safe "surfer" and never click on anything or download anything....other than the latest Norton. I had major problems with Norton for the past week or so and have spent a total of 3 days and 10 hours, talking with IT, Supervisors and Engineers attempting to fix it. They allegedly scanned my PC (remote access) and found nothing.
Yesterday my PC crashed and wouldn't even boot in safe mode. I took it to the shop and they found 2 worms and 2 trojans, which had corrupted some operating files. As a result some bad sectors were on the hard drive as well!!!!!!
It took them from 9am to 6pm, working on it all day, to retrieve my data. I spent $195 to get a new hard drive (upgraded from 160 to 320) and spent another $234 to run the diagnostic, clean the infections and transfer the data to the new hard drive (not bad for an entire day's work).
My question: WHY should I reinstall my Norton360 premier? It is apparently worthless. The guys at the shop felt the same way and suggested McAfee 2010. I said that I always felt Norton was better and they said that was true for previous versions. However, they said the 2010 version of McAfee is far superior to anything out there. My brother in law, who is currently doing his Phd in Computer Sciences (specializing in Networks) also suggested McAfee or Kaspersky.
I have 321 days left on my Norton subscription but am thinking that if I reinstall and have a rerun of this scenario it will cost me more than just switching to one of the others (as it already has).
I would ask a Symantec employee to let me know what my options are i.e. can I get my $$ back or what?
@cgoldman: I am waiting for them to call me back with the info on the types of worms/trojans and which sectors/fies were corrupted. As far as how they did the diagnostic; I can't really say but it looked more like surgery than PC work. They did mention something about having to remove the drive and plug it into something externally. I can say that the trustworthiness of the shop was reccommended by many people I know.
As far as HOW I got the infection...I've no idea. The only "unsafe" thing I do on the net is sometimes watch films through DIVX. I asked the guy at the shop about that and gave him the site. He said that he too "occassionally" watched films there and didn't think there was a risk, as you do not download but rather buffer in the player - what do you think? Maybe it's a question for my brother in law who, by the way, says that these days you don't even need to click anything to get something bad...he mentioned something about SQL's but that's all jargon for you tekki's.
@all: I am aware that the shop could have been trying to sell me on another program but : They said that there is NO 100% program out there (as many of you have stated) and they didn't want to bash Norton, as previously it WAS #1 in their opinions. They simply said that from experience (recent day 2 day) the other 2 programs were less often seen in their shop with problems of that nature i.e. infections.
On the suggestion of the forums here I also downloaded Malwarebytes...it too failed to detect anything in the scans. Moreover, I downloaded SuperAntiSpyware, on the suggestion of the forums, and it found 6 tracking cookies which was strange because I had downloaded the BetterPrivacy plugin for F/F3.6, which removed 1974 LSO's from the PC. I then scanned with Norton and Malware, both came up clean. Something strange I noticed though: I was watching a clip from CNN, after all these scans and removals, and the words EATEME showed up on the one clip? The next morning the PC was dead.
At the moment I'm trying to set up my PC from the "out of box state", which means 3 years of updates:(
So as I'm setting up everything I want to make sure that I have the absolute best protection I can becuase I do NOT want to shell out another $500. Therefore, what do you think I should do?
I have the free McAfee, came with the PC, on atm. Do I need to uninstall before downloading the N360P? Another thing I've heard from the shop and others is that problems with your system can also be caused by the way you install things or rather the order in which you install. So could someone EXTREMELY knowledgeable tell me what should go first then next etc e.g. I need to upgrade to Windows service pack 3 (my PC tells me) I need to reinstall N360P (I'll give it ONE more chance) and (I think) need to reinstall Firefox 3.6 (is it really the safest?) AND my DIVX player (tee hee:)
So it seems like the community only babded together in defense of Norton but not really to help...the customer...that's cool.
Anyways, I reloaded Win service pak 3 and reinstalled Norton 360premier and firefox 3.6.
Question: How do I get Norton to prevent cookies in my browser? When I use internet explorer they are blocked but not with Firefox. The tech at Norton said it was possible to have Norton do it but we got cut off before he could explain.
Actually, I suspect that we were all posting at the same time. Unfortunate, but that happens. I hope that you used the McAfee removal tool prior to installing Norton. If not they may both need to be removed, cleaned up and reinstalled. Antivirus programs hate each other and they all leave remnants behind.
I was talking to symantec, by phone, while reinstalling. At their direction I installed service pak 3, uninstalled McAfee first. Then loaded N360P. Then I put firefox 3.6 back on.
I noticed that the internet explorer blocked cookies but FF didn't so I asked the tech about that he said that I can set up Norton to block the cookies as well, but we were cut off before he could explain - so my current problem is how to get Norton to prevent cookies.
The tech said the risk is minimal but I read that these LSO's take up around 400kb of space in comparison to 4kb from a normal cookie. Moreover LSO's, so I've read, never leave your computer. I'm a bit jittery after becoming infected and I don't want a repeat so I'm looking for additional ways to safeguard. For example Firefox requires a Flash plugin to view different things and I hear that Macromedia is BIG on the LSO cookie things.
I don't think Norton blocks cookies, because you actually need some of them. You can set Firefox to delete cookies at the end of each browser session. It's the tracking cookies that tend to build up. There is an add-on for Firefox called Better Privacy that handles the LSO cookies.
You should have the add-on NoScript, as it serves the purpose of a pop-up blocker. There is also Add-block Plus which is an available add-on. Internet Explorer has a pop-up blocker as part of it.
@cgoldman: I am waiting for them to call me back with the info on the types of worms/trojans and which sectors/fies were corrupted. As far as how they did the diagnostic; I can't really say but it looked more like surgery than PC work. They did mention something about having to remove the drive and plug it into something externally. I can say that the trustworthiness of the shop was reccommended by many people I know.
As far as HOW I got the infection...I've no idea. The only "unsafe" thing I do on the net is sometimes watch films through DIVX. I asked the guy at the shop about that and gave him the site. He said that he too "occassionally" watched films there and didn't think there was a risk, as you do not download but rather buffer in the player - what do you think? Maybe it's a question for my brother in law who, by the way, says that these days you don't even need to click anything to get something bad...he mentioned something about SQL's but that's all jargon for you tekki's.
I dont see point in speculating. When you have more information maybe I can comment further. As I say trojans dont corrupt hard drives, and even rootkit infections dont (afaik). rootkit infections can remove essential operating system files but this is not what you said.
divx is not a means to pull movies off the web or stream movies (unless there is a feature I am not aware of). divx is an encoding method, and avi's can be encoded to divx. divx tools includes a player but it is not for streaming. Again unless you can advise exactly what sites you are referring to and what tools you are running with version numbers please. So regretffully I cannot answer the question you ask me. You provided more information to the shop than you have here.
yes it is possible to get infected without having to click anything particular.
Yeah I sent you a message re: the site info (didn't want to spam the forum).
So I've finally finished reinstalling everything and it all seemed fine but then I noticed my Realtek High Def Audio disappeared. Norton found the problem and told me how to uninstall the corrupted/missing file then reinstall with Add Hardware Wizard. However, it won't reinstall!! Says something about "Not passing microsoft logo test for compatibility with XP code39".
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG! This Norton/PC will shorten my life.
So....here I sit IN SAFE MODE because Norton failed to prevent 40 threats entering my PC. Moreover, there may be more than that because when it got to 40 IT CRASHED!!!
Did you get a popup from something saying that you had 40 threats on the computer? Were you downloading or installing something when things started happening? Give us a bit more info on this one. All is not lost.
@ delphinium: So I've got everything running again. It seems and I stress seems that there may be a problem between Norton 360premier V4 and XP Service pak 3. To make a very, very long story short I was reinstalling all of my programes, as was windows updates.
Norton was running an idle scan, while service pak 3 installed. The window popped up that there were 40 threats and then BAM the PC rebooted, and rebooted again....before I could go into safe mode and disable restart on failure.
It has taken some time to find out what, I believe, happened but when I got the PC on again my sound, Realtek High def audio driver, failed (code 39). I uninstalled the corrupt/missing files and reinstalled to no avail. Following several blue screen errors I learned that Service pak 3 was causing the problems. I uninstalled and everything is fine again. But now I'm stuck with service pak 2, which will no longer be supported after July 13:(
A few people on the Microsoft forums believe that it is a problem between N360 and SP3.
Is anyone else having these problems?
BTW: I ran N360 startup manager and saw THotkey. I researched and it said that it is okay if on a Toshiba (I am), in a specified location: C:Program files/Toshiba/Toshiba Applet (it was)....something to do with Fn keys on Toshiba.
However, it also said that there should only be one of this type of file and to check if there were others. So I searched and only found the one but then....I checked hidden folders as well and up popped this:
THOTKEY.exe-38837008.pf - I found it in location C:/Windows/Prefetch
I googled but there's no info...in English at least.
I have been wondering whatever happened to you. The biggest problem I see is that a scan was running in the middle of an installation. I ran into problems when a version change happened in the middle of a scan.
I would recommend removing N360, using the Norton removal tool, reinstalling Sp 3, updating the Realtek drivers (I had to do that as well), and your video drivers, and your audio drivers. Once everything is in place, reinstall N360.
The first place to check for drivers is on the website of the manufacturer of your machine. That makes coordination of multiple drivers easier. Download the updates, hold them on your desktop, and then begin with Sp 3.
I'm very sorry you have run into so many issues. XP will be around for a few years yet, but the support for it is waning. Software is moving on without us.
The file you found in the Prefetch folder is perfectly fine and is not the same as a regular executable file. You only have one copy of the executable file on your system; the prefetch folder deals with the loading of Windows and should be administered by Windows itself; leave it hidden and everything will be fine.
As to the problems with SP3 and N360, there is no known issues (as in you can never run N360 with XP SP3) but there is always room for improvements. Also, sorry for your trouble during the SP3 install but I seem to remember that MS advises that there not be any third party programs running during a service pack install. You should be able to have Norton installed during the update but a scan running during a service pack update would not be advised; there are too many files changed during the update and Norton could be scanning one of the files that the update wants to change.
@ Delphinium thanks - Just updated the Realtek drivers - not sure about aything else, as far as updates, though. Got 1 for the LAN, which I think i'll install but there's another...somthing about SD security for XP??
Anyways, does anyone know how to turn off the background scan in N360P V4? I want to try to reinstall service pack 3 for XP but am afraid the idle scan may cause problems. AND just to double check; I don't need to uninstall SP2 first, do I?