I just upgraded to Norton 360 5.0 from the prior version. As a long-time Norton customer through numerous programs and versions, I have a ton of often quite large Norton-related files on the virtually-full C: drive of my aging PC, and I'd like to delete all that are not required for the full operation of Norton 360 5.0. How can I tell what is required and what is not? Can any file that references a product other than Norton 360 be safely deleted? Can any file bearing a date prior to a certain date be safely deleted? Can any particular file types be safely deleted? Should I just uninstall all Norton stuff (then delete anything remaining in those directories) then reinstall Norton 360 5.0 on another drive? Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Hi, LawTunes,
Every Symantec employee post I've seen here actually strongly recommends that you uninstall all prior Norton products before installing Norton 360. Evidently, failure to do so can lead to more serious issues than a full hard drive!
Since you appear to be running the latest release of Norton 360 with some of those other programs still installed, and not having such problems, you probably don't need to uninstall and reinstall 360...but I'd say you're certainly free (encouraged, even) to delete any past versions of Norton security or utilities software you may still have installed.
You might also want to run a disk cleanup after you've done so (if you haven't already), to see what other space you might be able to reclaim on your hard drive!
Thanks for the response. I do not believe any of the old programs appear in something like "Add/remove programs" and these numerous files are probably just the detritus of the prior applications. At this point, I'm inclined to uninstall 360 5.0, clean everything out, then reinstall 360 5.0 on another drive -- but is there anything I must do or retain in uninstalling 360 5.0 so that the company does not treat this as an additional install, as I have none remaining? Thanks again.
The easiest way is probably to reinstall from your Norton Account. You won’t get dinged when it’s the same computer.
Hi Lawtunes,
Incase if you are planning to install the product and if you have Idsafe profile with logins, take a backup of it first from Settings UI and then you can proceed with your uninstall-reinstall proces. So that you can restore back the logins in the new install.
Regards,
Prasanna.
Once you save your cards and logins, remove Norton via add/remove first. Then run the Norton removal tool twice with a reboot after each one. You could then do a search under both Norton and Symantec to hunt up any leftovers. If you do this, you will need your activation key to re-activate.
Make sure that you download the version, either standard or premium that matches your present product. The keys are not interchangeable. Let us know if your version is a netbook or Gold version.
http://www.symantec.com/symnrt
Thanks. I'm not familiar with Idsafe so I presume I would not have such files. I do use Norton Parental Controls and wonder if uninstalling 360 5.0 would mess that up. I also have and use Norton PartitionMagic 8.0 and I'm wondering if the Removal Tool will hit that as well.
Yes. Both programs will be removed by the Removal Tool. All things considered, including the difficulty of determining what files belong to what program, if everything is working, best to leave it alone.
LawTunes wrote:
[ ... ]. I also have and use Norton PartitionMagic 8.0 and I'm wondering if the Removal Tool will hit that as well.
Norton stopped supporting Partition Magic some considerable time ago. What version of WIndows are you using? I think support stopped with XP so if you are using anything more recent it might be a good idea to uninstall it with the Norton Removal Tool.
Windows 7 does include some partitioning tools -- you can shrink (but not enlarge) a partition which is useful if you want to add a logical drive.
Otherwise there are other utilities including a good OpenSource one that I use.