Laptop Slow Startup and Shutdown

All of a sudden my laptop has started starting up and shutting down at a ridiculously slow pace. I actually took it in to work for the techy guys to have a look at and they say the problem is Norton and to get rid! As I've just renewed my software I obviously don't want to do this. I have Norton 360 version 22.5.4.24 installed and windows 8.1. I have little or no technical knowledge but the guy did show me in task manager, process, that Norton was showing causing disk to show 100% and red when starting up. This means nothing to me so any help would be gratefully received please.