NIS 2012 is doing a lot of background work, and I am curious what it does. My reason for using NIS is protection, but I don't think all it does is to protect me.
I get a popup notification when the PC have been idle for some minutes, informing me about it performing work in the background. It involves heavy reading/writing to the hard disk.
I think I have read somewhere that NIS 2012 will defrag the hard drive, but it is not actually doing it. Maybe it attempts to defrag, but I find no evidence of NIS actually doing it. My hard disk (in particular C) is now more fragmented than usual, and it's only a couple days since I ran the Microsoft XP defrag tool.
So if NIS isn't defragging, what does it do? It is doing something very often, as soon as the PC have been idle a few minutes. It is not the scheduled scan, I know when that is.
Open Norton and click Performance at the top of the view. Click Norton Tasks on the left side of the Performance screen. You will see the various Norton tasks listed there. Note, especially, the grayed-out entries at the bottom of the list, which are some of the background tasks that Norton performs. They are grayed-out because the entries are informational only and do not allow user configuration.
That's a long list of tasks. I forgot about this place in the Norton program, but I have seen it before.
Let's see...
- Automatic Live Update - Full system scan - Quick scan - Insight Optimizer - Norton community surveilance (?!) - Norton Insight - Always update ------------------------------------------- - Antispam mainenance - Lisence maintenance - Insight maintenance - Product maintenance
Some tasks in the list are concerning me. Why do they have to run so often? Take the license maintenance as example. Why do Norton need to check my license every few minutes? I feel insulted and offended. If my product wasn't stolen 15 minutes ago then it is probably not stolen now.
What is all the optimizing doing? I don't understand what it means. What is all the maintenance? I think NIS has a life on its own and is trying to steal the computer out of my hands. :o
Please Ms Shannons, don't be a nuiseance. I must ask you to help out or stay away and don't bother. You did not remove any vulgarity from my post as your edit claims.
If you have anything of value to add to the topic then I welcome your input. If not then please leave me alone. Thank you for your cooperation.
That's a long list of tasks. I forgot about this place in the Norton program, but I have seen it before.
Some tasks in the list are concerning me. Why do they have to run so often? Take the license maintenance as example. Why do Norton need to check my license every few minutes? I feel insulted and offended. If my product wasn't stolen 15 minutes ago then it is probably not stolen now.
What is all the optimizing doing? I don't understand what it means. What is all the maintenance? I think NIS has a life on its own and is trying to steal the computer out of my hands
Hi No_Toolbar,
There are a couple of items you can toggle to make things a little bit easier on you. First though, Norton is going to run it's background tasks during your computers idle time. As far as the 'Maintenance' items in the lower grayed out area, they are nothing to be concerned about. They run for seconds at a time.
The Idle Time Optimizer is a disk defragmenter which you can disable if you wish. I use windows defragmenter. It seems as though idle time optimizer hardly runs at all, when you use windows defragmenter regular and have idle time optimizer enabled and watch it in action. I read several versions ago, that the idle time optimizer, will only defrag your volume if it detects your drive is more than 10% fragmented. That's when I switched mine off.
Tasks like quick scans, updates, norton insight, norton community watch, (only if you have that setting enabled which you don't have to), will always run during idle time.
If you wish to disable Norton Tasks notifications, so they don't appear during idle time, go into - Settings > General > Norton Tasks > Norton Task Notification > move slider to Off position > click Apply. These notifications will no longer appear during idle time background tasks.
If you wish to disable Idle Time Optimizer, which is up to you, just do the same as in the screen shot. It's directly above the Idle Time Out. Move the slider to off and click apply also.
These will be a little help in preventing notifications. Keep in mind background tasks will still run during idle time.
