Having upgraded to NIS 21.10.0.18 on Win XP SP3 I am finding that one or more processes of NIS,exe are hogging cpu are certain times. Cannot stop the processes so have to wait until they release cpu to do anything.
Hi Dick,
Its an old machine with a 2Ghz processor and only 1 Gb RAM. Paging does not look to be the problem. That seems confined to cpu.
Cheers
Mar
Hi marhug, you could try running scans manually only, rather than via a schedule. Then you can run them at a time that suits you.. Also turning off things like Idle Time Optimiser, and on the General Tab under Performance Monitoring, there are items you can choose to disable there. This will help release some cpu for other tasks....You really do need more ram, if possible.
How do I schedule Norton processes manually? Cannot find where to do this.
Run a scan manually, by going to your Norton UI and selecting Scan Now, where you will be presented with a choice of Quick Scan, Custom Scan, {where you can choose which part of your system to scan eg Drive Scan or Folder Scan etc }, or the choice to do a Full Scan.
This can be done at a time that suits you .
Hello marhug,
In addition to the helpful tips provided by Dick and F4E, I just wanted to add that you are using NIS, which is one of the most complete, complex and evolved that exist.
There are other security software that wouldn't work on computers having these requirements, they would not even be able to work properly so that you are protected.
As mentioned by Dick, if your motherboard supports an additional GB of RAM, you would earn a lot, both for stability and performance.
Sandro
marhug wrote:Having upgraded to NIS 21.10.0.18 on Win XP SP3 I am finding that one or more processes of NIS,exe are hogging cpu are certain times. Cannot stop the processes so have to wait until they release cpu to do anything.
Are you sure it's NIS.exe and not svchost.exe?
I just installed NIS on XP and am also having terrrible performance problems. I am running XP SP3 with 1.6 GHz processor and 2Gb of RAM (the most I can load on the PC).
I haven't checked precisely what it is doing, but I believe it is more than just hanging on scans or db downloads. Also, the PC now takes 20 minutes for XP to shutdown.
This is my first (and last?) venture into NIS. Was running Kapsersky Pure 2.0 just fine until the license was due to expire and only shifted to NIS now after seeing user reviews that Pure 3.0 has install and license verification problems.
What specifically can I throw overboard? I just want good basic security, don't need a lot of bells and whistles especially if in brings the PC to its knees.
Thanks for suggestions.
May be related to the problem discussed here: http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-Internet-Security-Norton/High-and-almost-Constant-CPU-usage/m-p/1043071/highlight/true#M247767
Seen on WinXP and Win7
I have deleted NIS from my XP machine as it makes it virtually unusable. Have loaded a free tool Ad-Aware for the time being and so far it appears to work ok without the huge cpu toll of NIS. Goodbye Norton.
marhug wrote:I have deleted NIS from my XP machine as it makes it virtually unusable. Have loaded a free tool Ad-Aware for the time being and so far it appears to work ok without the huge cpu toll of NIS. Goodbye Norton.
As long as you're happy with how your "free tool Ad-Aware" and how is working on the actual protection you're getting with it, you can continue to use it safely.
It might be a good idea to do a downgrade from NIS 21 (aka NIS 2014) to NIS 2012 which is much better about performance on computers of older generations, it would surely have adequately protected your computer even solving the problem of the CPU that you were having with NIS 21.
Sam2 wrote:
I just installed NIS on XP and am also having terrrible performance problems. I am running XP SP3 with 1.6 GHz processor and 2Gb of RAM (the most I can load on the PC). I haven't checked precisely what it is doing, but I believe it is more than just hanging on scans or db downloads. Also, the PC now takes 20 minutes for XP to shutdown.
Hi Sam2:
Welcome to the Norton community:
If you open the Performance window and click inside the Performance graph in an area where you see a period of high CPU activity, the pop-up should tell you what process is consuming resources on your computer. The Norton Tasks window (Performance | Norton Tasks) will list the Last Run time and Duration of all the background tasks that run during system idles. Some, but not all, of these tasks like Insight Optimizer (Norton's disk defragmenter) can be safely disabled or re-configured without compromising your system security. If you can identity a Norton processes like NIS.exe or ccSvcHst.exe as the culprit (they will appear as yellow peaks in your Performance graph) you might be able to figure out the exact idletime task causing the problem based on its Last Run time.
Here are a few other things known issues you should check for:
Have you turned Automatic Events Monitoring ON in your Smart Firewall settings (see slee2's thread here)?
Do you have network monitoring software like NetWorx installed on your computer? Network monitoring software that came factory-installed on your computer like Asus Network iControl, Applian Network Monitor, etc. can also cause these types of problems with NIS 21.x - see Iancea's post here).
Do you have any other security software or firewall programs loading at Windows boot-up and running in real-time protection mode in addition to your NIS software? If so, please see the Symantec support article here. If you had other antivirus software installed on your system and removed it before installing NIS, it might even require a deep wipe of the old AV software using the manufacturer's removal tool to prevent a conflict with your Norton product. Post back with details if you think this might be your issue and we'll provide instructions on how to disable the real-time protection and/or remove this old AV software.
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MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * Firefox 25.0.1 * IE 9.0 * NIS 2013 v. 20.4.0.40
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
Thank you, Imacri and nikki605, for your suggestions on things to check.
Following nikki605's suggestion, I find that I also have two instances of nis.exe running, one with SYSTEM and the second with my name for the username, and that the second instance does indeed grab much more memory when the NIS dashboard is open and does indeed not release all the memory when the dashboard closes. I'm not sure that this explains my performance problems, however, since I my performance problems are present before I open the dashboard at all.
In answer to Imacri's questions:
I have not turned OFF the Automatic Events Monitoring.
I don't have network monitoring software running
I don't have other AV or security software or firewalls running
I did turn OFF the Insight Optimizer.
I have done one other thing which seems to have improved performance dramatically: I went into Settings | General | Other Settings and turned off all performance monitoring. It's still taking 20-30 minutes for XP to shut down and I still notice some hitches in performance, but disabling the performance monitoring seems to make XP more or less tolerable again.
So, my next question is: does turning off the performance monitoring impair the basic internet security functions of NIS? (That, after all, is all I want from NIS.)
Thank you, Sandro_cm for suggesting another approach to the problem: downgrading from NIS 21 (aka NIS 2014) to NIS 2012.
How would I go about doing this?
Sam2 wrote:Thank you, Sandro_cm for suggesting another approach to the problem: downgrading from NIS 21 (aka NIS 2014) to NIS 2012.
How would I go about doing this?
Hi Sam2 and Welcome,
This is the link to download NIS 2012: http://norton.com/nis12
If you're not interested in preserving "Identity Safe data", it would be a good idea to uninstall your current version of NIS by using the NRT (Norton Removal Tool) that you can download from here: http://www.norton.com/nrt
You may also follow the instructions I provided on this thread:
This would avoid having any conflict or malfunction of NIS 2012 due to previous installations.
Let us know if this might suit your needs.
Sandro
Having upgraded to NIS 21.10.0.18 on Win XP SP3 I am finding that one or more processes of NIS,exe are hogging cpu are certain times. Cannot stop the processes so have to wait until they release cpu to do anything.
Hi Sam2:
Phil_D has posted instructions here to downgrade NIS to an earlier version. Since you would like to downgrade to NIS v. 19.x (2012), you will need to download the offline installer from www.norton.com/nis12 in step 2 of those instructions.
Please note that Phil_D's instructions ask you to select "Please remove all user data ..." when you uninstall NIS from the Control Panel to provide the best wipe of NIS 21.x off your system. If you use the Identity Safe feature to store login passwords in a local vault (i.e., on your hard drive instead of in an online vault) please be sure to follow his instructions and back up your Identity Safe data in both the .DAT and .CSV format to ensure you can restore your local vault.
Also note that the Norton Removal Tool (NRT) will remove a wide range of Norton products, including Norton SystemWorks and Norton Utilities, so if you have any Norton products on your system other than NIS you will have to re-install them after you have downgraded to NIS 19.x (2012).
EDIT:
Sorry, Sandro. I didn't realize you'd already posted instructions while I was composing my message.
Sam2, I also forgot to mention that you should turn Automatic Download of New Version to OFF (Settings | Computer | Updates) as soon as you've finished installing NIS 19.x (2012) to prevent NIS from automatically upgrading back to NIS 21.x.
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MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * Firefox 25.0.1 * IE 9.0 * NIS 2013 v. 20.4.0.40
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
lmacri wrote:
EDIT:
Sorry, Sandro. I didn't realize you'd already posted instructions while I was composing my message.
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MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * Firefox 25.0.1 * IE 9.0 * NIS 2013 v. 20.4.0.40
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
No problem Imacri, this has happened to me too in the past
Sandro
Sam2 wrote:
I don't have other AV or security software or firewalls running.
It's still taking 20-30 minutes for XP to shut down and I still notice some hitches in performance, but disabling the performance monitoring seems to make XP more or less tolerable again...So, my next question is: does turning off the performance monitoring impair the basic internet security functions of NIS? (That, after all, is all I want from NIS.)
Hi Sam2:
To answer your question in message # 14, Performance Monitoring is an excellent tool for monitoring your resource utilization and helping to troubleshoot problems, but disabling it will not compromise your system security - see the support article here.
That being said, there's no reason why NIS should cause your computer to take 20-30 minutes to shut down unless something went seriously wrong during the installation. Sandro's suggestion to downgrade to NIS 2012 on your 32-bit XP SP3 machine sounds like a good idea since this version is still fully supported by Symantec.
If you decide to try the downgrade, let us know if you've ever had any other AV software installed on your computer, even if it isn't currently running in real-time protection mode. The symptoms you're describing could be caused by an orphaned file or registry entry left behind by uninstalled AV software and this would be an ideal time to wipe it off your system.
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MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 * Firefox 25.0.1 * IE 9.0 * NIS 2013 v. 20.4.0.40
HP Pavilion dv6835ca, Intel Core2Duo CPU T5550 @ 1.83 GHz, 3.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS