Norton 360 4.0 turns off Windows Security Center

Hello,

 

I have just installed Norton 360 4.0 on my Windows Vista machine.  The installation seemed to go fine.  When I was checking my computer after the installation, I noticed that my Windows Security Center is turned off.  When I try to turn it on, I get a message that states "The security service center can't be started". 

 

Before this installation, I had Norton 360 3.0 with Windows Security Center turned on and it would report that Norton 360 was controlling the firewall and the malware protection.  If I tried to turn on the Windows Firewall, I would get a message from Norton saying it is unsafe to run two firewalls.  Now, if I attempt to turn on the Windows Firewall, it allows me to without giving a warning even though my Norton Firewall seems to be on.

 

Everything seems to be running smoothly, it is just different from my other installation.  So, my 2 questions are:

 

1.  Why did my Windows Security Center turn off?

2.  Do I need to have it turned on if I am using Norton 360 for my firewall and malware protection?

 

Thank you for your help.

Hi login_123,

 

Welcome to Norton Community!

 

This problem can happen if the Security Center service is disabled when Norton 360 got installed in your computer. Security center controls the built-in windows firewall, and it needs to be disabled as you have got more advanced firewall in Norton 360. You need to manually start the service, and then turn on Windows Security Center.

 

Click Start > Run, type services.msc and click Ok. This will open a list of services. Locate the Security Center service, right-click on it and select Properties. Make sure that the service is started and set to Automatic. 

 

Yogesh

Thank you for your response. 

 

1. So if I leave the Windows Security Center disabled, will this be a problem?  Is there any need for Windows Security Center at this point?

 

2. For curiosity, I turned on Windows Firewall to see if Norton would recognize it and give me a warning, but it did not.  Is this because Windows Security Center is disabled?

 

Thank you again for your help.

1. So if I leave the Windows Security Center disabled, will this be a problem?  Is there any need for Windows Security Center at this point?

You can leave Windows Security Center disabled, it is not a problem. You need to enable it only if you want Windows to track and view the security status of your computer. You can find more information on the following link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Security_Center

 

2. For curiosity, I turned on Windows Firewall to see if Norton would recognize it and give me a warning, but it did not.  Is this because Windows Security Center is disabled?

It's working is entirely different. Norton 360 won't check if you have Windows Firewall enabled or not, it don't have to check the Windows Firewall status since the Smart Firewall included with in Norton 360 is much more advanced. But, Windows Security Center can detect and provide you information if the AntiVirus/Firewall component of Norton 360 is disabled.

 

Thank you very much.  That seemed to solve the issue I was having.

 

I have one last question that is a related issue.

 

After installing Norton 360, whenever I go to a secure site (like a retailer), I get prompted at certain times with a security warning from Internet Explorer.  The warning is:

 

Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely? 

 

I am using Internet Explorer 8 and this was not happening before I installed Norton 360.  Can you tell me why this is happening?

 

Thank you again for all your help.

It is not due to Norton 360. It is due to the security settings in IE8 which prompts when you visit secured Web sites(https://). You can disable it by following steps:

1. In Internet Explorer 8, go to Tools > Internet Options > Security.
2. On the ‘Security’ tab, click the ‘Custom Level’ button.
3. In the ‘Miscellaneous’ section, set “Display mixed content” to Enable.


Let us know the results.


Yogesh

Yogesh,

 

I changed the setting in Internet Explorer.  I then went to a retailer's website and logged in and I did not get the security warning again.  So, it looks like that solved the problem.  Thank you.

 

My questions regarding this are:

 

1. What is the risk in changing this setting?

2. Why isn't the setting by default set to enable?

 

Thank you again for your help.

This option specifies whether Web pages can display content from both secure and non-secure servers. By Default, the setting is Prompt, which prompts users before allowing Web pages to display both secure and non-secure content. This will help you to identify if a Web page contains any non-secure content.


Yogesh