Is there a way that I can prevent Norton from slowing down my computer

Norton Security | Norton Internet Security
1

Is there a way that I can prevent Norton from slowing down my computer? I would uninstall Norton then re-install it back onto my computer, but wouldn't the same problem just re-occur again? I would like to permanently fix this. 

My computer dosn't slow down all of the time, just sometimes out of random. I've narrowed my search down to the last possible reason that my computer has been very slow, Norton; and have read other peoples problems from different forums using Norton and the program also slowing their computers down. Most of these peoples problems are permanent, mine only occur randomly and last for hours before going away. (Usualy about 3 - 4 hours.)

 

I have done many thinkgs to try and figure out what could be causing this. To save the trouble of having me do the same things again I will make a list of the things that I remember that I have done. 

 

Cleared computer history to web browsers and windows recent memory.

Full Norton system scan (passed)

Uninstalled many programs

Downloaded Malwarebytes (passed)

Downloaded Spybot Search & Destroy (passed)

Cleaned and repaired registry

Performed a clean boot 

Restored computer back to manufacturers settings

Cleaned out PC case from dust

Re-seatted hardware after cleaning them each

re-applied thermall paste to heat sink

Bought a new powersupply

Ran hadware diagnostics scan with PC Doctor (passed)

Installed the latest version of windows vista through the update advisor

Kept Norton 2011 up to date by running Live Update everyday, followed by a quick scan before shutting down.

 

 

2

Hi Neintsha:

 

Welcome to the Norton forum.

 

Could you provide information about your computer system (e.g., processor speed, total RAM, hard disk size) from Start | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | System Information as well as your Windows operating system and Internet connection speed?

 

There are several background tasks like Insight Optimizer (a disk defragmenter) and Norton Community Watch that run when your system is in idle mode - see a list in the lower panel of the Norton Tasks window by clicking Performance | Norton Tasks).  These tasks normally don't have an impact on system performance while you're working on your computer, but you may want to read the post here in Patrick McCabe's thread Is Norton Slowing Down My Computer? for more information on configuring and/or disabling these tasks if your system has a limited amount of RAM or a slow Internet connection.  There are also troubleshooting tips in that post on how to use the Norton Tasks window to determine if one or more of the background Norton tasks are actually responsible for slowing down your computer.

 

Norton Tasks Last Run.jpg

 

 

Since you've performed a system restore, could you make sure that NIS 2011 is the only security software installed on your system that runs in real-time protection mode (i.e. that loads at boot-up). One possibility is that your system restore re-loaded a trial version of security software (e.g., McAfee, Norton AntiVirus, etc.) that's now interfering with your NIS 2011.  It's fine to have on-demand scanners like the free version of MBAM installed on your computer, but if you have any security software running in real-time protection mode (e.g., the resident TeaTimer feature of Spybot S & D) this could cause problems with your NIS 2011 installation.

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Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2011 v. 18.6.0.29 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 9.0.1
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

 

3

Operating System: Windows Vista Home x32 SP2

Processor: Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 @ 2GHz (Remains at 40c underload)

RAM: 3GB's including 1 extra through Windows Ready Boost.

HDD: 500GB (Running out of space now at 99gb's left, but the computer has had its random slow downs even when it had allot of memory to spare)

GPU: GTS 250 (1GB) (remains at 70c when underload)

PSU: 500 watts Corsair

Internet Connection Speed: Hillbilly Texas Speed, I hate it. 3mbps download, 0.25mbps upload. Best service offered in my location.

 

Thankyou for replying back :)

 

Edit: I removed TeaTimer from startup. there also no Norton tasks running in the background currently.

 

 

4

Hi Nevintsha

Nevintsha wrote:

Operating System: Windows Vista Home x32 SP2

Processor: Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 @ 2GHz (Remains at 40c underload)

RAM: 3GB's including 1 extra through Windows Ready Boost.

HDD: 500GB (Running out of space now at 99gb's left, but the computer has had its random slow downs even when it had allot of memory to spare)

GPU: GTS 250 (1GB) (remains at 70c when underload)

PSU: 500 watts Corsair

Internet Connection Speed: Hillbilly Texas Speed, I hate it. 3mbps download, 0.25mbps upload. Best service offered in my location.

 

Thankyou for replying back :)

 

 

You have kindly added the further above info that Imacri requested....I will not repeat any of the things Imacri has mentioned as he has covered many of the points I too would have suggested ........but I would ask you to further qualify the following ........Imacri wrote...

[Quote] It's fine to have on-demand scanners like the free version of MBAM installed on your computer, but if you have any security software running in real-time protection mode (e.g., the resident TeaTimer feature of Spybot S & D) this could cause problems with your NIS 2011 installation.[End Quote]


In the past , I have seen the Spybot S&D Tea Timer feature cause issues and slowdowns due to its' "real time " activity conflicting with other real time processes !

 

Can I ask if you can check this out primarily...as it could be part of the problem or be contributing to it in some way or anothet ?


You have carried out some sensible precautions that should have pinpointed any "thermal or overheating issues " ...but the fact that your slow down issues "kick in " after certain periods of time ...could well point to something akin to a "real time scan initiating " at a measured interval ......Check this out firstly , and we'll take it from there :smileywink:

                                                                                                                                         Thanks......Ed

5

Hi Nevintsha:

 

Your system specs look fine.  I run NIS 2011 on a Vista machine with 3 GB of RAM and a 1.83 GHz processor.  I have a dial-up connection and I've had to tweak a few of the configuration settings for my Norton background tasks to minimize the bandwidth used by NIS, so your connection speed looks blazing to me.:smileyvery-happy:

 

Thanks for the edit to let us know that Spybot S & D's TeaTimer feature has been disabled.

 

My initial guess is that there's some other software running in the background (e.g., a background Norton task, an automated software updater for a non-Norton product, a Windows background task like a disk defragment by dfrgntfs.exe, etc.) that's affecting your system performance.  The Norton Tasks windows might be able to show what tasks (yellow peaks for Norton's Symantec Service Framework ccSvcHst.exe process, blue peaks for  non-Norton processes) are running on your PC the next time you see your system slowing down.

 

Norton Tasks dfrgntfs.jpg

 

 

Other users in the forum have even reported that orphaned files and registry enteries left behind after uninstalling McAfee, AVG or some other security program will still interfere with their Norton product.  Let us know if you think this might be an issue and we should be able to provide a link to the manufacturer's cleanup utility to remove traces of any old security software.

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Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2011 v. 18.6.0.29 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 9.0.1
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

 

6

Task Manager shows that  20  30% cpu is being ussed and 40% physical memory. The HDD light however is solid yellow and the computer behaves as if it was put under a heavy stress test. Things are very slow to respond, however I have made some investigations on my computer during its slow periods. I have discovered that I can play games such as World of Warcraft, Skyrim, MW3 perfectly fine at their highest settings (All of this during the computer running slowly), but when it comes to a load screen the computer takes forever to load up other content. When the computer is perfectly at speed the load times are nothing and things run great during load points. What could cause for an issue where loading is slow during these slow periods, yet programs that require some processor stregnth seem to hold up quite fine?

Norton tasks ( I didn't even know that exists until today) Shows that it is virtually doing absolutly nothing to affect speed performance. But I cannot find any programs in the background running in real time that are updating or running scans.

I have only Norton now running the show in security. The Windows Defender service continues to run in the background, but it is switched off to prevent any issues between it and Norton. Also the Windows Update has always been switched off, I grew tired of my computer restarting on me to install updated whie playing a game in full screen mode.

I started The Norton Optimizer tool, but it is not helping either, I guess the optimizer is more for long term optimizing then fixing a slow computer at that moment? Could Norton have a hand in these problems, or could it be a program that has caused corruption that cannot be detected for repair?

Long ago in 2009 (My computer has these problems, even then)My computer was in even more horible state. A nice person from Norton support used a program to control my computer from his station. He repaired it and told me about how the registry that had some things wrong with it, coruption. The computer ran great for a year after that before the slow down periods returned. I cannot find any problems, but I also cannot find a program to scan for registry errors other then ccleaner. And basicly all that thing does is clean out dead paths, it dosn't repair a thing.

7

In the Task Manager, exactly which processes are using those 20-30%?

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Here is an image  :)

 It was useing around 52% when i took this shot I belive.

 

 

 

 

task.jpg

 

Edit: It has been a few hours now and my computer has just come out of its slow period. I should be able to reply back quicker now.

9

Thanks!

 

Images do not show for others until a moderator has approved them, but I'll check it out as soon as it is visible.

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Nevintsha wrote:

 

Task Manager shows that  20  30% cpu is being ussed and 40% physical memory. The HDD light however is solid yellow and the computer behaves as if it was put under a heavy stress test....

 

I started The Norton Optimizer tool, but it is not helping either, I guess the optimizer is more for long term optimizing then fixing a slow computer at that moment?

Hi Nevintsha:

 

Here's a screenshot of the processes in my Windows Task Manager - my CPU is normally running much lower than 20 to 30% unless I have a resource-intensive program running on my computer. The Symantec Service Framework ccSvcHst.exe normally uses only a small portion of that CPU.

 

Windows Task Manager.jpg

 

 

Does your hard drive stop thrashing if you put Norton in Silent Mode to disable all the idletime background tasks?  Right click on the Norton icon in your system tray and choose Turn On Silent Mode from the pop-up menu the next time your disk starts thrashing.

 

The Insight Optimizer task is simply a disk defragmenter task that schedules the native Windows Disk Defrgamenter (dfrgntfs.exe) every time you install software on your system.  It should only run when your system is in idle mode, but I have this Norton task disabled (Settings | Miscellaneous Settings | Idle Time Optimizer | OFF) and let Windows Disk Defragmenter handle my defrags once every few months because I think it's a waste of time to be constantly defragging my hard drive.

 

Edit:

 

Note that, unlike the Windows Task Manager, the graph in the Norton Tasks window will display a history of what processes were previously running on your system - just zoom out a timeframe like 90 minutes or 1 day and click anywhere in the graph to see a pop-up displaying the processes running 10 or 20 minutes ago (or as far back as one month ago if you zoom out to 1 month).  You may be able to match up a time of high CPU usage with a specific process.

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Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2011 v. 18.6.0.29 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 9.0.1
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS

 

11

No, it continues when I set it in silent mode. Takes a few seconds to bring up the silent mode option. I have even disabled norton for a small period to see if anything changed. I have done these before, should have mentioned it in my list in first post.

12

Hello again,

 

I looked at your screenshot of CPU usage through the PM link, and it does not actually show any special CPU usage at all. Most of it is used by the Task Manager itself, and that's because it's open at the time of taking the screenshot. Both of Nortons processeS are utilizing 0% of the CPU.

 

If you mean the high CPU usage for the "System Idle Process", that is actually the opposite of what it looks like. The higher the number for the System Idle Process, the less you CPU is being utilized. A CPU can never do just nothing, so when nothing else is going on, it runs this System Idle Process. Consider it your CPU rolling its thumbs. So the higher number for this process, the less your CPU is actually being utilized. A System Idle Process that shows 99% CPU usage means that your system is in a complete idle state, with the CPU being stressed minimally.

13

The CPU always sits around 20 - 30% for me unless I play a game or publishing a movie on movie maker, then it shoots up to 60% usage during games and about 90% during movie publishing.

Whenever the computer is behaving slow the CPU usage reamins just as low as it is when it is running normal. In otherwords, the HDD light sits solid bright while the computer is behaving slow and unresponssive, but the cpu useage remains at around 30% useage and physical memory at 50. Now when it is behaving properly, efficent, and with speed, the useage is also the same amount of useage. 

This is why I cannot find what is slowing it down so much and at random. Things such as closing out a program (any program, dosn't matter) will trigger it to slow down; waking it up from sleep mode can trigger it; Leaving it to itself; logging in can trigger it; downloading a program, installing a program, opening a program, anything I click is a possibility that it will suddenly slow down. Its a volatile mess! :S

Taskmanager may displays the signs of a clean running computer that is running perfectly fine, but it is not always true. Perhaps my operating system is corrupt? I thought restoring it back to factory settings would fix that.

 

Well we know now that it isn't Norton that is causing it. Its hard to find just exactly what is causing this to happen. I have scanned the hardware with diagnostics tools so many times and they are all displaying a healthy machine. The registry appears to be clean of errors and broken file paths, web history and cookies gone, spyware and malware non existent, and defragmented hard drive. This machine is evile xD

14
Nevintsha wrote:

The CPU always sits around 20 - 30% for me unless I play a game or publishing a movie on movie maker, then it shoots up to 60% usage during games and about 90% during movie publishing.

Hi Nevintsha:

 

I'm not sure that it's safe to rule out NIS with the information we have at the moment.  Your screenshot in message # 3 shows that you had over 1,279,000 disk reads associated with ccSvcHst.exe, but this may not be unusual if your PC has not been re-booted for a long time.  Dev9999 had out-of-date FIleZilla software running on his machine that caused a handle leak and excessive memory usage by ccScvHst.exe that was solved by simply uninstalling FileZilla (see here) and you could also have similar software that is significantly out-of-date since you restored your system back to it's factory defaults.  We've also seen cases where the Insight Optimizer task never terminated correctly and caused excessive CPU usage by ccSvcHst.exe because of a corrupted NIS installation (see here), and performing a clean re-install of NIS using the Norton Removal Tool as instructed here was the only solution for this high CPU usage.

 

Could you post a screenshot of the CPU graph in your Norton Tasks window for a 90 minute interval (see my screenshot in message # 5) so we can see if this high CPU usage is by ccSvcHst.exe or another process?  If you're seeing high CPU usage by a non-Norton process (i.e., blue peaks in the graph) then click your mouse over the peak to display the process name.

 

When you say you CPU usage always sits at 20 - 30%, are you certain you aren't talking about Commit Charge for your virtual memory?  The screenshot below was taken with Microsoft's Process Explorer v. 15 (available for download here) rather than Task Manager.  Process Explorer will show the commit charge in the bottom status bar and you can sort the CPU column in descending order and see the % of your CPU used by each process loaded into memory.

 

Process Explorer 2.jpg

 

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Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * NIS 2011 v. 18.6.0.29 * IE 9.0 * Firefox 9.0.1
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS