Kent Newsome on technology, music and life

1/12/2006


The Sad Tragic Death of Norton Utilities

Get out your crying towels, because I'm going to tell you a sad story.

Way back in the days of DOS there was this great suite of programs created by a genius named Peter Norton. They were called Norton Utilities. These programs helped maintain your computer by diagnosing and fixing problems and defragmenting the hard drive. The suite also included a disk editor, which I used all the time. In sum, most computer experts used Norton Utilities all the time back in the day.

In 1990 Norton sold his products, including Norton Utilities, to Symantec. Symantec kept the Norton brand and issued new versions of Norton Utilities and released new programs under the well respected Norton name, including Norton Antivirus. I used Norton Utilities up until Windows XP and still use Norton Antivirus. But that's about to change, for three reasons.

Reason Number One: Conflicts and Resource Hogging

Symantec continues to load too many features into both Norton Utilities and Norton Antivirus that I don't need and that I don't want. Both programs have been notorious for years for creating conflicts with other programs and for causing startup and shutdown problems. All of that is irritating, but, given my historical loyalty to the Norton brand, I have thus far overlooked these problems. In the newest version of Norton Antivirus, however, Symantec has added the incredibly annoying Norton Protection Center. This bloatware takes up system tray space and generally seems to be yet another unnecessary resource hog. I don't want this program, and if I'd known about it before I installed the new version, I would have taken the box back and found another antivirus program. After spending 10 minutes on the net trying unsuccessfully to find out how to remove or disable Norton Protection Center, I gave up and uninstalled Norton Antivirus completely. Simple is better, and with this unwelcome addition, Symantec has finally waddled across the bloatware line.

Reason Number Two: Shameless Upselling

Not only is the Norton Protection Center a blight on my computer in and of itself, it also seems to be nothing more than a thinly disguised ad for other Symantec products. C|Net had this to say about the Norton Protection Center:

[W]ith this year's debut of the Norton Protection Center, Norton AntiVirus 2006 has lost that uncluttered usability. The Norton Protection Center appears both as a separate icon in the system tray as well as a separate window within the software's control console. Most of the Protection Center's functions are useful, such as the alerts it sends if you don't have the latest virus definitions or haven't run a system scan in a while and the bar graph in the Status window. However the Protection Center is focused on upselling Symantec's other products to you rather than providing any new, useful security information. For instance, if you ask to learn more about data recovery, you're taken directly to the Norton SystemWorks 2006 product page on Symantec's Web site.

Reason Number Three: Rootkit, Round 2

eWeek reported yesterday that, on the heels of the Sony rootkit fiasco, Symantec has admitted using a rootkit-type feature in Norton SystemWorks that could provide the perfect hiding place for attackers to place malicious files on computers. Symantec, of all people, should know better than this.

It took 15 years, but Symantec has managed to ruin what was once a great set of utilities. I am in the market for a new antivirus program and would love some suggestions in the Comments.

If you want to see more neat old ads like the one above, check out this page.

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Posted by Kent @ 1/12/2006 08:04:00 PM | Permalink

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7 Comment(s):

Hi Kent,

I've been using the free version of AVG antivirus with good results for a couple of years now. They seem to update their databases on a very regular basis. There are paid versions with more features, but the free version works fine for me. It seems to be a very 'single-purpose' and lightweight utility. Maybe more what you're looking for.

By Blogger RichardQuerin, at 1/15/2006 6:48 PM  
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Kent,
In my Quest for disabling the Norton Protection Center, I found this page. You may have been a bit hasty in uninstalling Norton Anti-Virus 2006. I did find a way, by searching the 'net, to disable the Norton Protection Center & leave the rest of Norton Anti-Virus 2006 fuctional. I found the answer here at DSLReports.com

If for some reason the link does not work, I will post the answer here as well. It is as follows:

It can be disabled in "services".
Start > Run > Type "services.msc"(w/o quotes) > Enter;
Scroll down to Norton Protection Center Service and Disable it from there.

I will add a bit more information to that answer, & it is this:

Once Norton Protection Center is selected, right-click & choose properties. Click on the "Log On" tab. Select the "Hardware Profile" that you would like to disable it for. Click Disable, then Apply. In the main window of the Services, click on "Stop the Service".

DONE!

By Anonymous Steve, at 7/02/2006 7:33 AM  
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Thank you for posting how to disable the protection center. It is a bunch of crap that ruins computers and I'm glad to be rid of it. Why is every Norton so annoying these days?

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10/29/2006 7:14 PM  
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Once the dervice disabled, your event viewer fills up with DCOM errors though.

By Blogger Stophele, at 11/04/2006 7:35 PM  
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Kent: I couldn't agree with you more - thanks for your post! NPC is a nuisance (at best) and we were stunned to discover it AFTER we installed in on all 3 machines here...

steve: I am so glad to have found these instructions - you rock!

stophele: I will keep my eyes open for the DCOM errors... The lesser of 2 evils until I can jump to another program...

By Blogger TDAWG, at 11/24/2006 7:02 AM  
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Hey Kent,
Probably you have some better antivirus by now?

I am as impressed with NOD32 as we were both by the early Norton utilities.
Check it out!

best regards, Guido

By Anonymous Guido, at 12/07/2006 12:13 PM  
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Avira requires much less system resources than Norton. It does a solid job. The free version, combined with a firewall and your smarts will do you well. Check out the tests at AV Comparatives.

By Anonymous matthew, at 11/10/2007 4:00 PM  
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