This is my first time using this forum and I'm excited to see that there is so much information already available in the forums to help. I've been running Norton since about October of 2012. I did Live Update about 2 days ago and defragged last week. I have the Norton Antivirus from CenturyLink, my ISP. The version I have is not Norton 360. I'll get on later and post the version when I get the chance.
I've been playing a lot of Guild Wars 2 and it has been a blast! Unfortunately, my download screens are taking an extra long time to load. Usually it takes about 5 minutes to load a new map. Also, I've been playing Arma II : DayZ and have been noticing the same problem, incredibly long download screens (about 10 to 15 minutes). Not to mention, when I first started with my PC everything was lightning fast and within 2 weeks everything began to run like cold molasses.
So I tried the silent mode feature of Norton with some success. I even added the game's executables to the silent mode list in Norton. The screens sometimes take less than 5 minutes now. When I completely disable Norton it helps even more and brings down the load time to usually less than a minute, sometimes 5 seconds like it used to.
I like having my antivirus up while playing. One time while playing GW2 I visited a website for my daughter to dress up puppies, which attempted to give me a Trojan. Thank goodness for Norton because it caught it. My PC's basic specs are as follows.
i7 3.8MHz
8GB DDR3 RAM
2.00 TB HDD GEFORCE
EVGA GTX 670 (latest drivers updated)
1200 WATT 120X240MM Corsair Liquid Cooled Cooler Master Storm Stryker Case (Ok, I'm white'n'Nerdy.. you'd have to see the case to understand!)
So I talked to the IT pro friend of mine and he said that I could run chkdisk /f in the command prompt. He also recommended that I switch to MicroSoft Security Essentials if I don't go to bad sites. I might just do that. He said it is a very light anti-virus. I don't go to bad sites especially on this PC becuase I want to keep it in tip-top shape plus I owe it to my wife not to. Another thing I should do is partition my hard disk. I don't want my PC playing Where's Waldo anymore...
As for modifying Norton I am considering changing the early loading to Normal or Agressive. I should also modify my insight protection settings and optimizer settings as I have read. I'll give Norton another opportunity before switching to Microsoft Security Essentials. Both are free to me so I really don't have the need to rush one way or the other.
Would someone mind providing me the link for the Official Norton Removal tool? I don't want to get stuck with some evil knock-off.
If you are a gamer, you should ask your ISP to switch your Internet connection to the "fast path" instead of "interleaved".
That way your ping should decrease at 5msecs, maybe you will lose some frames in the game which is not an issue BUT your response times will be much improved!
So I went and tried to use the 'chkdsk /f' command in the command prompt.
The command prompt replied, 'The type of the file system is NTFS. Cannot lock current drive.'
Basically, Norton or another program is not allowing me to use dskchk and as a result I will have to use msconfig to stop whatever is preventing dskchk from working. This should be fun.
You would be well advised to check and let us know exactly which Norton product you are using and what version it is before messing around with the system.
I've never had Norton stop me from running chkdsk but if you try to run it on the drive on which Windows is installed it cannot run and will ask you to restart your computer upon which it will run before returning to Windows.
Your Norton application is designed to run in the background and to do heavy stuff while the system is idle. I'm not sure what you mean by << I like having my antivirus up while playing >> but if you are scanning the system while trying to game I'd say that would account for the slowness you encounter.
<< As for modifying Norton I am considering changing the early loading to Normal or Agressive. I should also modify my insight protection settings and optimizer settings as I have read. >>
<< Would someone mind providing me the link for the Official Norton Removal tool? I don't want to get stuck with some evil knock-off. >>
Again I get the impression you are working blindly on this so please hang on for some more expert advice than I can give -- the best advice I can give is "When in doubt, do nowt" (Nowt = Nothing)
I ran chkdsk but this time waited for a bit and it prompted the request for checking on the restart. It was running so slow last time it didn't prompt me. The scan came back perfect just as I thought. The version of Norton that I have is 19.9.0.9.
For the slowness while playing games, try right clicking on the Norton icon in the system tray and clicking on Turn on Silent Mode.
You might want to go one step farther with chkdsk and use the /r option. This will check your disc surfaces for bad sectors.
To check your hard disk, click on the Windows Start button. In the search box type CMD. Right click on cmd.exe and click on run as administrator. In the command prompt type "chkdsk c: /r" without the quotes. A message will come up asking if you want to check the disk on the next restart. Answer 'Y'. Reboot and the check disk will run before Windows starts up. This check will check the file system as well as the physical disk surface. This scan can take a long time, depending on the size of your hard drive.
The nice thing about the tool is that it stops all of the Norton processes, which gives you a nice and clean uninstall.
Also, note that even before attempting to uninstall Norton that an error popped up mentioning something about Symantec Framework. Obviously something was wrong with my Norton in the first place and a reinstall might have fixed it. I did not understand the error but didn't care anymore.
After removing Norton I checked the loading times for GW2 (Guild Wars 2). Loading screen times went from about 5 minutes with Norton to about 1 minute with Norton uninstalled.
Next I uninstalled my EVGA graphics drivers and deleted the program files associated with them. Then I installed the latest versions of graphics drivers.
Finally, I installed Microsoft Security Essentials and now my load screens are about 25 seconds.
Conclusively, uninstalling Norton greatly improved my PC's graphics performance (from 5 minutes to 1 min). Also, uninstalling and wiping the previous drivers for my EVGA GeForce 670 helped moderately (from 1 minute to 25 seconds). I'm sorry that I didn't wait for more help and a Norton approved solution, but I've gotten to the point where I just wanted to use my PC again. The one down side is that Microsoft Security Essentials may not be the best antivirus. I'll probably come crawling back on my hands and knees to Norton.
You mentioned in your original posts that you do not visit bad sites, then you say Norton protected you when you went to get something for your daughter. Sometimes 'normal' looking sites can get infected. That is why you need protection.
You did make a few changes all at once, even noting that there may have been a problem with your original Norton installation. The graphics driver could also have affected Norton's performance.
Fwiw, I updated my Nis v 19 to v 20, after the latest patch, and I can honestly say that it is running as smoothly as the previous version, and my PC is as snappy as ever. Basic maintenance like regular defragging and using a good utility like CCleaner, will help. I also notice that MSE recently did badly for the second time, in tests. I'll stick to Norton, for the peace of mind.
I'm sorry to say, but this is not a really thorough comparison.As far as i can see, you did not even try to reinstall Norton again before using MSE and do the tests afterwards. Especially pity, while your Norton install apparantly was broken in some way and could have caused the long load times.
Normally, on all my machines and the machines i service, Norton is very light and does not hog the system, so it deserves to be reinstalled again.
FWIW, i would uninstall MSE and reinstall Norton, as you will be better off with protection then. At least give it a try.
Thank you all for your additional posts! It is too bad that I was not able to hear all of your responses before I did the uninstall.
Someone mentioned that they thought it was my graphics drivers but honestly, I uninstalled and installed new drivers on my machine 5 times with no benefit before uninstalling Norton and it just so happens that EVGA released a new Beta driver on the 28th of January 2013 that I had not installed before. Installing the new drivers only made a moderate improvement compared to the extreme improvement of removing Norton version 19.9.0.9. In fact, the release notes from EVGA showed that the new Beta version would improve the rendering time up to 28% on certain games, not 3,000% like with the Norton uninstall.
My ISP is currently offering Norton 360 but it is a "pay for" product. Unfortunately they are not offering version 20 at this time.
Hugo, you did mention that it would have been good for me to do the reinstall of Norton after having uninstalled it. I can see your point, which is valid. Maybe all I needed was a fresh install. I think that I might try another Norton install later this week. I'll be sure to uninstall MSE first if I do. I really appreciated your meaningful and respectful post. It seems like there are some haters here.
I cannot believe how fast my computer runs now! Literally my graphics card is running at 219+ frames per second :D I capped my in game FPS to 60 so that my graphics card will last longer, it is cooler for it too. I am so happy! Load screens in the game are now close to half a second instead of 5 minutes. Thank you all again for your responses and PS don't be a hater!