norton renewal

jane · 16-06-2005, 15:40

hiya all,
i have a new xp pc that came with a 3 month trial of norton antivirus and firewall, thing is its coming up to the renwel date and they want Ã‚Â£24 for antivirus and Ã‚Â£21 for firewall for 12 months. is this good or shall i try one of the free ones? if i get a free av and firewall will i have to uninstall they trial ones or could i just disable them and keep them on the pc incase i want to return to them? thanks from jane

Paul · 16-06-2005, 15:45

Best way is to uninstall the old ones before installing new ones as they can interact badly sometimes during an install. I haven't run a nortons product on my PC for years, there are a number of free Anti-virus tools and free firewalls available to download. If you like Nortons then keep it and pay for the upgrade, if you don't mind trying a freebie then go for it

Scrubbs · 16-06-2005, 16:15

I would go for the free ones and get rid of norton,( I have disliked them since the PC tools days) if you don't like the free ones you can always get a trial from some of the others at a later date
I use avg and zonealarm

**Rob** · 16-06-2005, 16:22

Windows XP SP2 has a firewall, why not just use that. Might not be quite a sophisticated as Norton, but it will probably be adequate. I'd save the money too and just have the freebie antivirus of AVG (Grisoft) or similar.

These days I'd only pay for added protection for the business network which at times can take quite a hammering, and whcih it's difficult preventing users doing something silly.

If your home PC is kept reasonably current with patches, the free AV is up to date (AVG updates itself quite nicely) and you take sensible precuations, like not opening attachments on emails that you wern't expecting, you don't need the sophisticated Norton Systems.

Paul · 16-06-2005, 16:51

Remembering of course that SP2's firewall is inbound only and if you get infected with spyware you won't get any warnings about outbound activity on your connection.
There are several free firewalls, members here run several different types and there are several free anti-virus programs that are run by members here.
Other than that a good anti-spyware tool or two will help protect your system very well. One thing to remember though is that disabling something like a firewall or anti-virus has (in the past) locked many a pc internet connection up solid. It's always best to totally uninstall the software rather than take the risk of system settings being compromised.

fudge · 16-06-2005, 17:07

When i bought my pc from pc world it had norton 2003 installed , but i was not told this and pc world sold me norton 2004.

After installing the 2004 my pc completely messed up , ( when ever i had to restart my pc after doing a windows update , it would not reboot,) i had to turn the pc off at the mains as nothing was responding.
In the end i phoned up the pc help desk , who realised that norton 2003 was on my pc and i had installed 2004 as well , and this was messing the whole system up and after a long time on the phone to sort the prob. out we had to restore the system back to the factory settings which fixed the problem but wiped out every thing else including the internet which i had to reinstall.
I have kept the norton 2003 installed and get regular updates,
So what im trying to say is be very carefull , because you could end up with the same problem as i had if you install anothere anti virus with norton installed. I must add that even though norton 2003 was on my pc it was not activated and it still caused me big problems . So i know if i got anothere pc i would stick to the one installed.

**Stuart C** · 16-06-2005, 17:12

I have McAfee on my laptop and Norton on my desktop PC, and I can honestly say it's doubtful I'll be renewing my subscription to Norton when (if) it expires. It has caused a hell of a lot of grief when installing on SP2 (I believe it's because I have an early version of 2004 that works, but is difficult to install on SP2). Nope, when that expires, I'll be looking for another virus scanner..

Paul · 16-06-2005, 17:13

It was installed, wether it had been used makes no difference, installing another firewall or Anti-virus software can play havoc with settings and files. Running 2 firewalls at the same time or 2 anti-virus tools at the same time can lead to major problems.

jane · 16-06-2005, 18:43

yiykes i dont know what to do now!
sounds as if i'd better pay up, i dont have much luck with pcs! my last one died a horrible death and i'm still in mourning!! if i uninstall this one and get something different i will probably break the bloomin thing!

thanks for all your replies guys

Paul · 16-06-2005, 18:46

Actually you might find the opposite but like I said if you are happy with nortons then get the renewal. It's very rare that removing nortons from a relatively new and clean installation causes any problems.
You could uninstall it, try a freebie and if you don't like it, re-install Norton and the renew it. Depends on what you want to do, if you are happy with nortons and it isn't causing you any problems then you may as well stick with it if you don't mind paying for the subscription. If not then remove it, try out a few freebies and if you can't get on with them you always have the option of reloading Norton and getting the renewal subscription.

caroline · 16-06-2005, 18:51

Hi
I have friends who say avast is very good and they have never had no problems with there pc and it is free.

Paul · 16-06-2005, 18:53

One other thing to remember is that if it goes wrong you know where to ask the questions

jane · 16-06-2005, 19:04

the only thing is if i uninstall the trial version of norton i cant put it back on as the pc didnt come with a disk, i had to make recovery disks. im not sure if i can or how make up back up copy of norton

Paul · 16-06-2005, 19:08

The PC came with no CDs at all?

You can actually download them from Symantec on a "trial" and then get the renewal subscription so you don't lose anything

SYmantec Store

Janos_Audron · 13-07-2005, 17:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by jane

hiya all,
i have a new xp pc that came with a 3 month trial of norton antivirus and firewall, thing is its coming up to the renwel date and they want Ã‚Â£24 for antivirus and Ã‚Â£21 for firewall for 12 months. is this good or shall i try one of the free ones? if i get a free av and firewall will i have to uninstall they trial ones or could i just disable them and keep them on the pc incase i want to return to them? thanks from jane

Probably a bit late but if your going to subscribe uninstall norton then go out and buy the full internet security package from some where as it works out cheaper

Then every year get the newest version and uninstall the old.