Does Nortons Slow Down Internet Access?

[ameerat42]

Hi, only me lamenting again :rolleyes:

I am trying to set up a new laptop, 64-bit Win 10 job...

Yeah, mostly OK, but I have noticed that when I'm downloading (drivers, etc) the download speed
is often very slo-o-o-w :( It has a 30-day trial of Nortons security suite installed. If I try the same
downloads on my own computer (roughly equivalent in specs) that does not have Nortons, the speed
is about 5~10X faster. (BTW, an OOKLA test shows all pretty good.)

Is this just an alias effect, or does N's really take that much out of the performance? :confused013:confused013

I can't wait (end of 30 days) to ditch N's and just use Win defender. - I might not wait, yet! :eek:

[John King]

Am, I gave up using Norton s/w in the late 1990s when Peter Norton sold it. I found that it dramatically slowed every computer it was installed on ...

I recommend MalwareBytes Premium these days. Head and shoulders above the rest.

[ameerat42]

Ta, that is about what I was gunner do.

Do you have any info on how/why it slows things?
I did disabled a (dys-)feature on it the other day, but can't remember what it is.

[Gazza]

Hi, only me lamenting again :rolleyes:

I am trying to set up a new laptop, 64-bit Win 10 job...

Yeah, mostly OK, but I have noticed that when I'm downloading (drivers, etc) the download speed
is often very slo-o-o-w :( It has a 30-day trial of Nortons security suite installed. If I try the same
downloads on my own computer (roughly equivalent in specs) that does not have Nortons, the speed
is about 5~10X faster. (BTW, an OOKLA test shows all pretty good.)

Is this just an alias effect, or does N's really take that much out of the performance? :confused013:confused013

I can't wait (end of 30 days) to ditch N's and just use Win defender. - I might not wait, yet! :eek:
Good idea. The installed 'Windows Security' works quietly in the background with no hassles for me. What more do you need?

[John King]

No. Just poorly written, bloated code, I suspect.

Don't touch Kaspersky. AVG Free picks up things that Kaspersky should never have allowed through!

AFAIK, MwB is the only anti-poxware that actively watches for crypto virus behaviour, not just known viral signatures.

[ameerat42]

Ta, guys. Cripes, what a pass! :rolleyes:

- - - Updated - - -

JK, Gazza...
Done! Sold to the man in the hat!

...The installed 'Windows Security' works quietly in the background with no hassles for me...

Uninstalled Nortons successfully (ie, now Not On the computer :p) and set up Win Def firewall and virus protection.
Also installed SuperAntiSpyware (14-day full trial) and downloaded Malwarebytes to install later after consult'n with owner.

All working fine.

Another 2 Qs:
1) Is it worth setting up the W 10 "ransomware protection" based on OneDrive?
2) " " " " " " " " "account protection" (whatever that means)?

If the acct protection means having to log in with password then I won't.

[Bear Dale]

I wouldn't allow Norton anywhere near any PC I owned AM.

Give Kasperksy a try, you won't see any slow down at all.

[John King]

I wouldn't allow Norton anywhere near any PC I owned AM.

Give Kasperksy a try, you won't see any slow down at all.

Ha ha, Bear. That's largely because it seems to me to be fairly lax ...

I support a friend's computer. He installed Kaspersky a few years ago on third party advice. In spite of my showing him that it wasn't catching stuff it should have caught, it is just so easy for him that he renews his subscription every year - even when I'm there telling him not to!!

[Bear Dale]

John, I've used it for longer than I can remember and I've never had the slightest problem. Its popularity and following its gained in the nerd world is huge. It always is rated highly in every computer magazine/website.
Happy to pay my yearly subscription :)


Ps Antivirus discussions can turn into Holden vs Ford discussions, but seeing I drive a Landcruiser I'll stay out of this now :)

[ricktas]

Get rid of Nortons. Kill it.

A couple of years back a friend had an issue with a new computer. No matter what they tried it would not connect to their wireless network. We spent hours on it. Brand new.. out of the box.

I was watching the processor and noticed a file. Googled it.. a nortons file. Now even though Nortons was on this pc, we had not run it, or even 'activated it' on this brand new computer. It should have just been sitting there waiting to pop-up saying its usual crap about install me. A check of installed programs did not show Nortons. But there it was sitting on the desktop as an installation option. Yet here it was running a process already.

Disabled the process and voila..wifi worked.

Nortons is nothing more than a virus itself.

[John King]

John, I've used it for longer than I can remember and I've never had the slightest problem. Its popularity and following its gained in the nerd world is huge. It always is rated highly in every computer magazine/website.
Happy to pay my yearly subscription :)


Being a 'nerd' myself since the early 1970s, I have found Kaspersky to have significant shortcomings. MalwareBytes does not appear to have those shortcomings. Having run my own computer consulting business since the late 1980s, and been troubleshooter of last resort for a couple of Australia's larger companies, I have come to trust my own judgement.



Ps Antivirus discussions can turn into Holden vs Ford discussions, but seeing I drive a Landcruiser I'll stay out of this now :)

Too true. Driving a Subaru myself, I will too. :nod: :lol:

[Saph]

As others have said norton is a steaming pile of words that shall not be said and should be removed (something i should do myself on my laptop if its there)

Just windows defender and malware bytes do fine tho i run avast as a back up since i run the free version of malware bytes.

[ameerat42]

Ta, guys. It is well and truly off that computer now.

I also have 2 different mates who are running McAfee and (I think) Nortons
as paid subscriptions. Both are on firm contracts that when these are over,
I will be called upon to exorcise their machines of the program.

Reminder: Can anyone venture some reply to my additional 2 Qs in post 6?

[arthurking83]

acct protection, needs a password, or pin No. for login.
Can't say the I've ever needed it.

As for ransomware, just be smart ... and again not required.
Nice to have, but ransomware will usually be 'installed' if you open a file from a foreign entity of unknown trustworthiness .. ie. be smart!

eg. emails come pretty much every day from 'my bank' .. both of origins obviously known to be false pretence, and totally legit origins(ie. my actual bank).
Never respond, never open any links via the email(ever!!).
If there's a real bank issue, I'll either log in manually from my known link, or call bank to figure out the issue.

a few years back, I had a credit card(I think Westpac) .. maybe Virgin(one or the other).
Anyhow, for some reason the brand of the CC changed, I'm sure I got the snail mail for that change, but I think I noticed that it was brand B credit card envelope, not really interested in 'junk mail' so it got chucked in the recycling, direct from the mail box.
But they were legit mail directed at me .. for me! It was about the change of CC from one to the other brand(thinking back I think it was Virgin to Westpac).

Anyhow, started getting phone calls about my Credit Card and that I needed to take some action.
Bank employee saying that they needed confirmation of my ID!

Yeah, right .. you call me, asking my bank details ... and of course I'm just going to give those to any 'joe on the phone'.

My bad .. they were legit calls and emails, but me being standard issue paranoid about any such contact regarding sensitive issues like that ... the 'sensible' thing to do is ignore that contact and make direct contact with the bank I deal with.
But remember, I had a Virgin CC, and the call was from Westpac CC .. so of course highly suspect from my point of view.
My bad for not opening what I thought was spam snail mail and read the letter tho.
Anyhow, all worked out in the end(6 months or so later when it struck me, I hadn't used that CC for about a year .. and time to close it down). I think I owed 20c or something for ignoring it for so long.

So if you get emailed statements from bank .. delete them. Go to bank website and download from there .. etc. etc.

I haven't opened a statement or invoice for a good 10-15years now .. always go direct to the website to check it there.

99.9% are probably legit emails and attachments, but that one that may pass through .. the 0.01% that is ransomware is the one that gets 'ya.

Q: now with Norton uninstalled, have you tested the connection speed of new lappy to see if it made a difference?
My initial thought was that you're comparing two different systems, so not a direct comparison. Too many variables between systems to lay the blame on Nortons.
My first thought would have been update drivers for whatever connection method you used on the new lappy.
Was it eth, or wireless? if Wifi, was it 2G or 5G.
Do you know the networking hardware on the new lappy? What module, chipset, driver version .. etc.
There's a ton of difference in speed just on that side of the equation, never mind the interopability between different hardware types/brands/models etc.
That is, your router/modem may not play as nicely with the network adapter on the laptop, as it does with the adapter on the PC .. etc.
I've had that myself with my PC.
Got the motherboard I did, based on the eth card(chip) it had installed on it .. at the time a very high quality brand/model.
But, never played nicely until a long time later when Killer Networks finally updated the driver to a setup that my Netgear router finally liked.

[ameerat42]

Ta, AK.

Surprisingly, Spam has decreased of late. I must be a lost cause in Spamada :rolleyes:

I'd get it from courier coys, airlines, do-gooders,... you name it. (See a few of my threads thereon.) :rolleyes::rolleyes:
There used to be about 10-15 a day. Now it's only about 1 or 2 every 1 or 2 days. It's such a pity that people get hoodwinked.

Somebody I know recently got a death threat in a phone scam :confused013 :rolleyes: It got reported to scamwatch, but :confused013

It's such a simple expedient to hover the mouse over the sender's name to reveal the true address. I'm glad I've never had a
ransomeware attack. It'd be such a (temporary) inconvenience. I must admit that my own email username got hacked and a
bunch of stuff was sent to my contacts a couple of times - even to myself from me :rolleyes:

Now to Nortons...
OdDLy, the Ookla speed test was the same +/- both before and after ditching Nortons. It was actual file download speeds
that were affected. I tried a few, to make sure it wasn't some alias effect. - Consistently slow with N's installed, even when
I had switched off (what I thought were) Internet throttling controls in N's. I was testing a non-N's machine on the same
wi-fi connection at the same time. There was about 10-15X difference. With N's gone, BANG! - up went the file download
speeds to "normal". - A-a-a-and the Ookla speed "was still the same".

Other Qs: Wifi 5G; Intel Wireless AC 9560; chipset is ?; drivers are presumably up-to-date but :confused013 for sure...

Only 1 question I have, AK:

In Device Mgr, the adapter properties are set to "Wireless 802.11 a/b/g". Should I change them to "...n/ac"?

I have connected to the Wifi 5G band, presumably the AC protocol.

- - - Updated - - -

Hmm! Maybe this page (https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/12/30/802-11ac-vs-802-11n-wifi-whats-the-difference/#5ee725583957) answers that question.

[John King]

Thanks for the correction, Richard. Since writing that, I checked and found that a number of programs offer this now. When I first subscribed to MwB a couple of years ago, they were the only ones offering this.

[ameerat42]

Ta, Richard. That's exactly how those settings are now. I will leave them as they are.
(I was a bit :( to find that my own 2012 BIOS dated machine does not have an AC band adapter.
Pr:(gress, I suppose.)

[bitsnpieces]

Maybe it's just the settings

My workplace uses Norton; I asked id they've ever considered using something else but they said Norton hasn't given them issues with the software we use, where others potentially can (not sure if it means they've tried it themselves or based on experiences from other companies who use the same software as us)

Anyways, I personally use Comodo at home
Whether it's the best or number 1, I don't know
I only use it because it has firewall and anti virus, and the interface and all seems to work ok, not sluggish like Avast (when I used to use Avast and Windows Firewall only)

[ameerat42]

Ta, David. No, I only changed the settings after I had got rid of Ns.
(Actually, I can't remember even if I did... - Oh, yes, I did. - One of them.)

[tandeejay]

Another 2 Qs:
1) Is it worth setting up the W 10 "ransomware protection" based on OneDrive?
2) " " " " " " " " "account protection" (whatever that means)?

If the acct protection means having to log in with password then I won't.

Issue I have with using OneDrive for my account protection is that you only get about 5gb of storage on the free OneDrive.

if it is going to provide me with account protection, it would need to store ALL my personal files which with all my photos is far greater than the space in my free onedrive account... I mean, I currently have 2 x 16GB SD cards in my camera... one photo shoot is going to blowout that 5gb on one drive...

To make it a viable option, I would need to pay for sufficient OneDrive Storage... And even if you had enough OneDrive storage, it would not really be viable unless your internet connection is faster than a basic NBN plan. (i.e NBN50 as a bare minimum)

[arthurking83]

5Gb?
Have they changed something?
Mine is 15Gb .. have to say zero input from me .. I rarely use it(don't really care for it either) but I do have some 'important' files I like to have multiple copies of.
My account info says 49Mb of 15Gb used.

[ameerat42]

It used to be 25GB. That's what I had. - Hmm, had! I wonder what it is now?
(Might have a look by and by :rolleyes:)

[Jaded62]

Norton's paranoia and hearsay. This topic has been doing the rounds for years. Its like Land Rover and Toyota, PC and Mac, etc. Everyone has an opinion and a story of woe to tell.

Yes, no doubt it slows access but any antivirus checking files will have to do this anyway. The question is how slow and whether you can notice the difference. I suspect on a slow PC you would.

I've run Nortons on our family PCs for years with no dramas other than their annual renewal rip-offs. Seldom had virus issues and that with 2 teenagers downloading like mad. I do not run the Nortons browser add-ons, just the app in the tool tray. We also use the password manager which works well.

Currently we run here at home 3 desktops and 1 laptop W10 64 bit on mid to high specs and 2 laptops W10 low specs with no problems.

[ameerat42]

^Then besides just illustrating the same emotion as you decry, shed some hard specs on settings and the like
that might "correct" our wilfully wayward thinking.

Did you see in the posts that I cited an approx X10 difference in performance?

No matter what, a qualitative case for some significant effect on performance by Ns seems to have been made.

Arm-waving to stop arm-waving is not much of a counter-argument, no matter if backed up with testimonials.

[Jaded62]

Arm-waving to stop arm-waving is not much of a couhttp://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=1490564nter-argument, no matter if backed up with testimonials.

Yes but arm waving makes me feel both part of the herd and apart from it :)

What settings would you like to see? With Firefox and Outlook running Nortons is idle with no load on the system.

[arthurking83]

Am, what you could(should!) have done to confirm the slowness, is to sue performance monitor(and or task manager) to see how much PC resources Nortons .. or any other program/service was using at the time of downloading.

At least see where the blockade was originating. Was it disk, or network, or maybe pagefile or whatever.

I've gone back through the thread(again) and didn't see anywhere that you confirmed that Windows Security wasn't running concurrently.
That is, whoever installed Nortons, did they .. or did it automagically .. disable Windows Security suite?

etc. etc.

[ameerat42]

AK.
Actually, apart from my mostly wailing and gnashing of teeth (and squaring!)I did some of that.

I checked the Ookla bandwidth meter (I H8 the term "speed test") and surprisingly found that it
was not so different from the "usual" I had come to suspect. It wasn't 47 down, but about 35.

Task Manager showed WiFi Direct doing "very little" >Ed: during dloads< AND all file downloads were
loathably slow, like about 90-100 Kbits/sec :eek: Umm, I don't remember the CPU and Disk figgers,
or if I even look at them.

Apparently Win Sec was not running at the same tome as Ns, because after removing the latter, I had
to attend to those settings. For my benefit, somewhere along the way Avast has slipped into the
installation and was running. For some time before I even put on SuperAntiSpyware I had "some"
protection.

So after all that, WS was back on and SAS, and then I removed Avast. That's all I can say/recall.

- - - Updated - - -

A point that has not been PUBLICLY STATED throughout:

Of course, this machine was straight from the store, and so an Acer installation
of Win and other software.

[Jaded62]

Of course, this machine was straight from the store, and so an Acer installation
of Win and other software.

If Acer are anything like Dell there could be issues there. We use Dell at work so I am stuck with the Dell/W OS foibles but at home I build my own desktops and use (to date) Asus laptops.

[ameerat42]

Same here for Asus and a critical eye for recent Dell laptops.
Their desktops have been good. - Had/used/knew people with
same over the past 2 decades or so. I have found Toshiba
satellites of more expensive build to be both good and fast, the
cheaper ones just being "good" and reliable. Lots of ppl I know
have a swathe of these. This Acer surprised me :)-antly, even
though it had "only" a late model I Core I5 (4-gotten details).

One thing good about it was - like Asus - not as much in-your-
face firmware apps, unlike Toshiba, which is the only other minus
for them.

[ameerat42]

Yes, Richard. Exactly the same files. I ended up dlding them onto an external drive and connecting that
before uninst. Ns.