Hi all.

Finally come to the end of my tether with Norton on the computer and binned it. Question now is do I rely on the XP firewall, or any suggestions out there for a much less intrusive Norton substitute ? I'm not particularly into computing, so any answers in plain English please !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mike.

Hi Mike,

The home / consumer versions of Norton have got quite bloated and cumbersome these days, and can really cripple even a modern machine.
My aunt recently bought a new laptop with Vista and Norton on it, and the first thing I had to do was remove the latter because it was practically unusable with it on. The amount of memory and other resources it takes up has gotten very unreasonable.

Anyway, I'm not surprised you've got fed up and binned it. There are a number of alternatives available, including free ones such as AVG, which you may have heard of. Personally, I don't trust AVG too much, as I've had to fix far too many machines which are riddled with viruses, with AVG cheerfully proclaiming 'you have a virus!', with the frequency of an XM crying about ABS and brake light bulbs. The trouble is, though it reports the presence of viral activity, it very often fails to remove any of them!

Personally, I stick to using an older version of the corporate edition of Norton, 'Symantec client security'. This is without the bloated crap of the home version, but still offers competent virus protection. I can sort you out with this software later on tonight (I'm not home at the moment) if you wish, or perhaps someone else might have a reccomendation of another freeware client which is a bit more reliable.
This is only my personal opinion of course, others may well disagree!

Ciarán

Hi Mike

I have had 'Zone Alarm' on mine for a couple of years, and apart from it blocking some information and them sending me the wrong update, its generally been fine. I certainly havn't had any 'nasties' in my machine.

Peter.N.

Sorry to confuse matters, but I presumed (perhaps wrongly!) that you were talking about Antivirus software, Mike.

After reading Peter's post though, I realised that you may have removed just the firewall element or Norton, and still have a working antivirus. The post I made above refers to AV software only.

Generally, as firewalls go, the XP builtin one is actually very competent, and is great for no-frills protection, its a lot better than it gets credit for.

Just to clarify, are you after AV / firewall software, or both?

Ciarán

For 2 years I've used my XPs with the XP firewall on only, plus the AVG-antivirus but I'm just working that one manually from time to time to check for any viruses (ie I keep it off, normally). I haven't had anything wrong till present.

regards
George

I have great news for those of you grappling with anti-virus software. Buy a Mac - and have lots more free time to devote to your XMs!

Regards
Kiwi

I installed Avast antivirus some time ago. It's free, it updates daily and seems to have been very good.

Hi Guys.

Thanks for your various thoughts so far. I hate to say I'm not particularly clear about the difference between a firewall and anti virus. I think I have the AVG anti spyware (?) which I update manually. What does a firewall do that anti virus doesn't (or vice versa) ?
Kiwi --- a good friend of mine is an Apple man --- and he seems to spend 90% of his time trying to open and communicate with those of us who have machines that do most of what we ask without any bother. At the moment he's in trouble with his new broadband provider, because the modem (or whatever it's called) won't play with your OS10. Think I'd take a bit of convincing to make that leap !!!!!!!!

Mike.

Installing Norton is a mistake, very difficult to get rid of, not fully effective. Sometimes I have to deal with it sigh.

If you have a home router with a NAT firewall, great, that will kill off all the oportunistic port scanning stuff, the rest of it gets in via email and the web mostly, don't use Outlook, disable images in email, don't click on stuff you're not sure about, and don't use IE as a web browser. And get a home router with a NAT firewall if you don't have one. The use a firewall if you really like slowing down your PC. No router, sure use a firewall, I am not sure how fully effective they are especially when booting and logging in.

Like Jorgy9 I load AVG for a quick scan every now and then. They do an anti-spyware product for XP now too.

A firewall is basically looking at your network traffic and deciding what to let thru and what to not let thru depending on how you configure it.

Anti-virus will allow you to scan your system and incoming stuff like email, downloaded files etc for viruses.

Anti-spyware is looking for mainly broswer based nastiness that can range from quite innocuous to very serious.

Believe me, get a hardware router with firewall

later

Hi Mike,

Simply, the job of antivirus software is to physically check for malicious code and malware on your machine, it will monitor everytime a file is opened, moved, created, or deleted, and act accordingly if any content matches or looks a bit like anything in it's database of known nasties.

A firewall, is mainly tasked with monitoring network activity, and protecting your machine from malicious elements on the network or internet. It basically inspects all incoming and outgoing network traffic, and makes decisions based on rules you've set, and some best guesses on the nature of the traffic. For example, it will automatically block connection attempts on certain ports that may be commonly used by trojans and virii. A firewall cannot physically detect or stop a virus infestation on a machine, but it can prevent communication between a piece of malware and it's base, stop it phoning home if you like.

As you can see, the function of these two types of software is very closely related, however they are not one and the same, which is a common misconception. The situation isn't helped by the fact that some antivirus includes a firewall, and some firewalls include antivirus, but its not always the case, and one alone will not do the job of the other.

If you have Windows XP SP2, you already have a perfectly adequete firewall built into the networking layer of the OS. Installing something like Norton Internet Security will take over the firewall functionality and use it's own solution, disabling the Windows firewall.
If you install a standalone antivirus client such as AVG, or Avast, like Ken suggested, then you still require a firewall, so you can continue to either use the Windows one, or download and install a 3rd party one.
Hope that makes sense, its a bit of a mess I totally agree!

Hi Mike,

There are times when a Windows biased site or ISP will cause minor hiccups for Mac users, but there are always simple work arounds for them. Those minor hiccups are more than compensated for by the absence of virus issues (and the associated anti-virus dramas) that we Mac users enjoy. Combine that with an operating system that even the latest Vista can't match and it is little wonder that Mac users always feel sorry for PC users shackled to the windows world. Sadly, - and I guess the analogy here is with people who prefer XMs over other cars - Mac users understand what PC users are missing!

Regards,
Kiwi

Not to rock the boat Kiwi, but I do sometimes find the presumed immunity of Macs from viruses and malware a dangerous thing.

Windows is a more popular platform, so obviously the majority of 'bad stuff' is going to be written for that environment, to stand a higher chance of success. Though very few Mac viruses exist, the potential for them is certainly there, should someone decide to write one. The really bad thing about this is some Mac users don't bother with AV software and other security measures, to the point where a great many people are going to be caught with their trousers well and truely down, the day that it does eventually happen.

I work in IT and can see the benefits of both platforms, however I'd be very wary of lulling anyone into a false sense of security with Mac OS or indeed anything else.

Fair comment - and spoken like a true PC user. Each to his own - enjoy!

Regards,
Kiwi

Hi Guys.

Thanks for the wealth of suggestions and education ! First and most obvious thing is that having removed Norton, the machine does plainly go a lot faster. I'd read a few things saying Norton was hard to get rid of --- maybe I was lucky (or have been duped ??), but I came across a link to an uninstall program on Norton's own site, which really does seem to have taken it away painlessly. Found one or two bits and pieces left behind which I manually deleted.
Having come across some other favourable references to it, in the course of checking up on removing Norton, I've gone with Ken's suggestion and loaded Avast. Seems to have gone in OK and certainly (as yet !!!!) doesn't seem to have significantly slowed anything. Oh well -- time will tell.

Mike.

Hi Mike,

Just picked up on this thread. If you downloaded Avast anti virus and you are running AVG (also antivirus). This is a very quick way to screw your machine. Delete AVG cos its dodgy anyway and just use Avast.