I recently discovered that NortonSecurity.exe is writing to a file (diStRptr.dat) on one of my SSD's at the rate of 90MB/sec. This is steadily chewing through the useable life of my SSD at a relatively steady pace.
No form of manual intervention seems to impact this and as soon as Norton starts up, off it goes steadily writing again (very little read action).
I contacted Live Chat support and after bypassing the singularly useless chatbot got through to what can only be described as an even more useless person. After wasting almost an hour watching the customer service rep run through their embarrassingly novice checks live on my screen I was then promised a call back. Presumably from someone with actual technical knowledge and experience rather than someone scrolling slowly through a script.
Guess what, no call despite me confirming repeatedly with the agent that it would definitely happen.
So two things, has anyone else noticed the constant writing to this file, there are very limited google results? Any potential fixes?
And secondly does anyone know if Norton still has any form of complaints channel? They seem to have progressively made it harder over the last 5 years to speak to actual humans with knowledge and capacity to help.
I do not have Untitruck at all but I had the same problem. Two days ago Norton forced me to uninstall, it did pop up on my desktop, and install again and reboot automatically Norton 360. I did not initiate this process! I just agreed to make it happen; Norton Windows popups.
After 24 hours I cannot see any disk activity at all from Norton processes,... however, let's monitor it much longer.
Does anybody have a similar experience as me?
p.s. I did not make any changes to my hardware, or OS still all the same I contributed to this thread.
I've been following this thread for a few months now, as I also encountered the same annoyances as described above. Very high continous disk write (90MB/s to 130MB/s), by one Norton Security instance writing to the infamous diStRptr.dat file. Resulting in the already mentioned damage to the SSD and non-performing PC (no access to SSD with Windows OS). The only workable 'solution' was to uninstall Norton AntiTrack.
These issues started when I installed Norton AntiTrack v1.2.0.531 per November 2021. And these problems disappeared as soon as I unistalled this Norton AntiTrack version. No further changes to N360 or other (Norton) software required. The situation did not change when I tested Norton AntiTrack v1.3.0.660 in January. Same hassle.
However, as of this week I am testing Norton AntiTrack v1.4.0.760. Surprisingly, no issues yet! No heavy disk writes, no high processor usages, no performance issues while intensively using my PC, especially MS Edge and Firefox (where AntiTrack problems initially peaked). So I am carefully optimistic, as Norton seems to have addressed the issue. Unfortunately I have not been able to find a changelog for the AntiTrack product, so not sure what issues were addressed by Norton with the latest release. Looking forward to reading your experiences with the latest AntiTrack build.
I have seen the same problem with Norton 360 and I do not have anti-tracker. With Community Watch enabled, the writing to diStRptr.dat and diStRptr.dat.log is constant at about 60MB/sec on my machine. When watching the file sizes using file explorer, I see diStRptr.dat remains constant at about 300,000kB, while diStRptr.dat.log resets to 1kB every few seconds, then goes back to about 26,000kB. When this happens, the time stamp on both files is updated to the present. So it seems something is being repeatedly logged.
When I disable Community Watch, this activity stops, although it recurs once every few minutes, lasting only a few seconds. Perhaps just enough to re-write both files once. I suspect that this is some more general logging activity that is constantly invoked by Community Watch, but also used in other cases.
.... I am blocked from entering my Norton 360 settings other than "Product Tour," "Launch View," or "VPN." Same from within the app or from Windows app settings. I use Windows 10 Home and am familiar with the Norton 360 settings page...
Hi ZonieB:
Did you use the Windows Resource Monitor as instructed <above> to confirm that your problem is related to high disk writes by NortonSecurity.exe to the diStRptr.dat or diStRptr.dat.log file before posting in this thread? The symptoms you've described don't sound as if they are related to the Norton AntiTrack (and/or Norton Community Watch telemetry data collection) issue being discussed in this thread.
You said in your 10-Dec-2021 thread PC Computer Inoperable After Norton Update/Restart that your HP Spectre X360 with Win 10 v21H1 and Norton 360 was working normally, but if you are currently having problems viewing or enabling/disabling your Norton settings on this Win 10 computer it would be better if you started a new topic so you don't take this thread started by Customer_00FU off-topic.
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Dell Inspiron 15 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H2 build 19044.1415 * Firefox v95.0.2 * Microsoft Defender v.4.18.2111.5-1.1.18800.4 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.0.152-1.0.1538
I am blocked from entering my Norton 360 settings other than "Product Tour," "Launch View," or "VPN." Same from within the app or from Windows app settings. I use Windows 10 Home and am familiar with the Norton 360 settings page that I have used previously. This is crazy!
If you are seeing the new My Norton interface, click on Open beside Device Security. That will bring up the classic interface you are used to.
Your suggestion is within my technical comfort. I will not mess with command prompts because I do not know what I am doing.
I am blocked from entering my Norton 360 settings other than "Product Tour," "Launch View," or "VPN." Same from within the app or from Windows app settings. I use Windows 10 Home and am familiar with the Norton 360 settings page that I have used previously. This is crazy!
It might be helpful but tbh I am not here to solve Norton's crap for them. I uninstalled the Anti-Track and the background tasks as per above in order to ensure that my disks lifespan wasn't compromised any further than it already had been.
It was the resource monitor that I had already used to track down the issue. It was diStRptr.dat that was being written to. I didnt check the file size but that wasn't my concern. The SSD is multi TB but I hadnt noticed a dramatic reduction in available free space. It was more the fact that the disk response time was almost completely compromised as the write speed would alternate from c20MB/sec to c90MB/sec back and forth every second. But it remained constantly writing.
For me it was only one of the NortonSecurity.exe processes that was responsible for the writing not the second. The read data was typically 0 as per the above screen shot, I cannot recall it ever being above 0 tbh.
I have also unmarked the supposed 'solution'. I do not believe I marked this solved so it is concerning that somebody was able to.
It seems others are still experiencing the problem so i will leave it unsolved. I however will simply leave the antitrack software uninstalled for a few months and hope at some point Norton fix their mess.
It might be helpful if affected users could post a screenshot of the Disk tab of their Windows Resource Monitor (Task Manager | Performance tab | Open Resource Monitor) with:
Processes with Disk Activity with the Write (B/sec) column sorted from highest to lowest activity and filtered by NortonSecurity.exe, and
Disk Activity expanded with the Write (B/sec) column sorted from highest to lowest activity.
The screenshot below was included in a PDF attached to Mike.Duncan's 20-Dec-2021 original post in Heavy Disk Writes to File diSTRptr.dat Affecting Win 10 Performance and shows high disk write speed (in Bytes/sec) being made to the log file diStRptr.dat.log (i.e., not diStRptr.dat) at a rate of ~ 2 to 5 MB/sec.
Having the data sorted by the Write (B/sec) columns this way might give us a better idea of your total disk write activity that can actually be attributed to NortonSecurity.exe while it's writing to files in the hidden C:\ProgramData\Norton\...\diStRptr folder (which could degrade system performance), but it wouldn't tell us if the diStRptr.dat and/or diStRptr.dat.log files are also increasing in size over time and consuming free disk space. To do that you would have to launch File Explorer and show hidden files and folders (i.e., enable View | Hidden Items) and then monitor the size of those files in the hidden C:\ProgramData\Norton\...\diStRptr folder for a few days. When working correctly, many log files will purge older records as new records are written to the log to prevent the file from using too much disk space.
Same here! It is still writting something to SSD drive. All those advises to uninstall, reinstall that product are uselless! It looks like in this forum customer are on their own. Nobody from Norton developnent team is readibng this. U bought a product I have to support on my own. Stupid me working for free for Symantec!
Disabling Norton Community Watch did not solve the problem. The only thing i have been able to do is completely uninstall every aspect of antitrack and to remove any ability for Norton to run background tasks. On their own neither fixed it but doing both seems to have removed the problem for now. It's not solved as clearly the problem is some flaw within the products. I am not going to become some guinea pig for their shoddy software so will leave it uninstalled and absolutely regret even buying antitrack.
Does anyone know what AntiTrack problem the hot fix is supposed to correct? Gaythri_R's announcement doesn't provide any details or link to a relevant thread, and I can't see any recent posts in the Norton AntiTrack board indicating that the hot fix of 21-Dec-2021 solved a known issue with AntiTrack, including the problem described in Noticed Hard Drive Just Continued to Run Constantly for Hours.
The original poster for this thread, Customer_00FU, reported <above> that their high disk activity was caused by NortonSecurity.exe writing to the diStRptr.dat file. I have no idea how Norton 360 and Norton AntiTrack are integrated, but anything to do with diStRptr (Stat Reporter Job Worker) still make me think that Customer_00FU's specific problem is somehow related to Norton Community Watch. I don't know who marked this thread as solved a few days ago (hopefully it was the OP Customer_00FU and not one of the Norton employees) but it would be helpful to know if disabling Norton Community Watch as instructed <here> actually fixed anyone's high disk writes to diStRptr.dat.
Just an FYI that Mike.Duncan posted about a similar problem in their 20-Dec-2021 thread Heavy disk writes to file diSTRptr.dat affecting Win 10 performance. The PDF attached to that post has a screenshot of their Win 10 Resource Monitor showing their high disk writes are being made to diStRptr.dat, and Mike.Duncan has noted that turning off Norton Community Watch did not solve the problem.
I to have seen this problem, as of now i believe it to be a issue with anti track, it hits my ssd with 100 megabytes per second writes and just stays writing. i have uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times and the issue never goes away, so now with just norton360, no anti track the issue is not happening.
Having the data sorted by the Write (B/sec) columns this way might give us a better idea of your total disk write activity that can actually be attributed to NortonSecurity.exe while it's writing to files in the hidden C:\ProgramData\Norton\...\diStRptr folder (which could degrade system performance), but it wouldn't tell us if the diStRptr.dat and/or diStRptr.dat.log files are also increasing in size over time and consuming free disk space. To do that you would have to launch File Explorer and show hidden files and folders (i.e., enable View | Hidden Items) and then monitor the size of those files in the hidden C:\ProgramData\Norton\...\diStRptr folder for a few days. When working correctly, many log files will purge older records as new records are written to the log to prevent the file from using too much disk space.