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June 24th, 2008

Killing Off Antivirus


After reading this post questioning whether antivirus software was a virus in itself, I was prompted to let you know my experience.

A few weeks ago, a guy at work came into the office and asked me to help him speed up his computer. This first thing I did was try and remove Norton Antivirus. I’ve always found this to be a horrible resource hog, and there are better solutions available for free.

No matter what I tried, the PC wouldn’t let me uninstall any part of the software until other parts of the software were removed first. Classic malware behavior. Eventually I gave up and looked for a solution on their website. It turns out their Norton Antivirus Removal Tool is the most downloaded software on their site. I’ll let you make your own judgements about that.

After about half an hour I managed to get every last trace of the software off his PC, and got a huge increase in performance.

Forward three weeks…I get a phone call from my colleage saying he is now getting bullying pop-ups from Norton on his PC telling him to update his Norton Antivirus. What a disgrace! The only solution left in my armoury was a fresh install of XP.

In my opinion viruses are a scare tactic used by big software companies to peddle their wares. Do me a favour and follow this advice.

  1. Don’t install big-name antivirus software. Stick to something like AVG.
  2. Don’t visit dodgy web sites….you know the ones.
  3. Don’t open dodgy email attachments.

If the worst comes to the worst and you still get a virus after all that, you can be safe in the knowledge that it won’t be as bad as having antivirus software killing your PC.

Alternatively…buy a Mac.


In: opinion | tags: , , , , , , . | #

  • agree 100%. The most common thing I see are users installing (or buying a computer with it preinstalled) Norton Antivirus thinking that it will "protect" them and then complain that their computer is slow.
  • What is worrying is this is sold as a benefit for your PC. These companies are taking advatage of people's ignorance of the problem.
  • It took me forever to get Norton off my laptop. I had the same problem.
  • ...and Norton are definitely not the only culprits!
  • I agree completely as I had Norton 360 on one of my PC's and it was an absolute pain to remove and I hadn't realized how slow the PC had become until it was gone! Plus 360 is sold as a simple user friendly solution that does it all for you with little knowledge required and in that read....we load it all on for you, configure it automatically then make it impossible to remove unless you know what your doing!
  • Excellent post - and I agree with you. I have recently looked at Kaspersky and was horrified by the performance hit the PC took. I ended up installing Avira as a "good enough" solution.

    I have seen a machine pre-installed with Norton where it could not be removed before. Not nice.
  • Orlandin
    For Christ sake, why is it that every time someone has a gripe about a Windows based machine it has to end with "buy a Mac"? Guess what, Norton is just as big of a pain on a Mac. People are writing virus for Macs. It is not the God system. It doesn't even have 9% of the computer market share (http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/...)
    Uninstall the program, find something better, and move on. If that is the least of your problems; consider yourself lucky.
  • Ahhh Orlandin. Thanks for popping by and not really reading the post. I gave three solutions for PC users. I'm a PC user for goodness sake. The problem, as you so completely ignored, is how difficult it is to uninstall the software.
  • Ubuntu is a great alternative without having to buy a mac. it can be customizes to look like a Windows or Mac computer too.
  • sl
    alternatively... use linux
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