Has NOD32 AntiVirus ever eaten your Thinkpad?

Well I took the plunge to remove Symantec Corporate Edition from my new T60. I used Add/Remove to get rid of the main components and then used the Norton Removal Tool from their website. Then activated my freshly paid download of NOD 32 antivirus people were raving about. Well it seemed fine after install and then I noticed CPU usage was through the roof. Finally if I right clicked on any file the hard drive just kept scanning and scanning instead of giving me the right click menu. I would have to manually turn off the computer (I hope I didn't damage the HD, seems ok on PC Doctor). Incidentally if I tried to open Office 2007 it kept thinking it had to be reconfigured for some reason but then wouldn't do it and would give an error.

I restored the system to my old backup with the Symantec, everything works fine now. But I'm $39 out and wondering, has this happened to anyone else's Thinkpad when you try to put new antivirus on it? Should I have done a complete restore (without Office 2007, etc.) and then removed Symantec and installed NOD32, before all my software was put on I mean? Not sure it's worth it, Symantec Corporate doesn't seem that slow after all. But I wanted to get your thoughts?

Thanks,
S

 

Try redownloading it. Sounds like the dl was corrupt and it caused a file to be corrupt causing weird behaviour. Make sure when you uninstall NAV you restart then clean the computer of all NAV files and registry entries, restart then installed NOD32. Make sure you're not connected to the net when you're doing all this. You don't want to take any chances.

 

I suppose it's possible it was corrupt. I do also remember that when I did the Add/Remove of the various components, I may not have rebooted the computer right then, I may have gone straight to the norton removal tool, and THEN rebooted. Then I downloaded (yes without virus protection, but it was through firefox directly to the NOD32 company site) and then installed it. Rebooted. Seemed great and then it barfed....continuously!

So did I miss a step? Did I need to go in the registry manually and change something? I have NEVER done that, how do I do that? I had hoped the removal tool would do it all for me?

 

NOD32 is amazing
retry it

 

I found a website with in depth instructions how to remove Norton from the registries as well.

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_to_fully_remove_norton_from_pc.html

I plan to try that and nod32 one more time. The great thing is aside from the time spent on this whole process I can always thinkpad restore to my last backup, so that's good. Hopefully it's worth it, everyone seems to love this program.

 

I recommend AVG. It's free and doesn't eat resources.

 

AVG is king

 

I am running NOD32 on Vista home premium. So far, haven't had any problems.

Sounds to me you probably had some problems during installation.

And were you running any bit torrent programs at the time. Older versions of some bit torrent programs have known problems with NOD32.

 

I have NOD32 running on two 3000N100 laptops (one XP Home, the other XP Pro). Rather than uninstall Symantec's junk I took a different approach - this is what I did:

Go to Start/Run and type msconfig - [Enter]

Untick all entries that refer to Norton or Symantec

Go to Settings/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management

Choose Services

Under Startup Type, set all Norton or Symantec to Disable.

Done! This kills off all Norton/Symantec processes.

When you reboot, Msconfig will shout at you, but just check the little box that says 'don't tell me again'. Check Task Manager just to make sure that no Norton or Symantec processes are running. .

Then install (or enable) NOD32. It's brilliant. You'll breathe a sigh of relief!

 

Thanks for all the replies. I tried it a second time. This time I used very thorough instructions on how to remove Symantec, I'm actually positive I completely removed it, entirely, and used clean install, got every registry, you name it, it's not that. I then re-downloaded a whole new version of NOD32 from my purchase email link and installed it. EXACT same problem, the moment I hit the right click mouse button instead of giving me the list of options it just keeps showing the hour glass symbol. At this point I didn't even bother to test rebooting the system and trying to see if Office 2007 was messed up, too, I just threw my hands in the air and did a system restore.

You know I was very careful, followed each step for removal of Symantec as well as installation, restarted all along the way when needed to make sure things updated. I don't know if there is some conflict with the Thinkvantage software or something I'm missing.

 

When you installed NOD32, did you right click and choose "run as administrator?"

Weird. Normally this kind of problem you described happens when you have 2 antivirus programs installed at the same time. That's what happened to me a couple of years ago when I accidentally installed both Macfee and Norton antivirus at the same time.

You might want to download a copy of "Tuneup Utilities 2007," it has a 30 day trial, and run a "one touch maintenance scan" of your computer. That will clean up some registry problems.

 

Hmmm, well I am certain I removed every last piece of Symantec this second time, I mean registry, every file, even hidden ones, then used CCleaner with also cleans registry if I had missed anything, I mean the thing was beyond dead. But I wonder if NOD32 would be giving me this problem if Symantec had never been installed on the thinkpad in the first place. Once again, I didn't entirely hate this corporate edition of symantec, it seems much faster and I have a LOT of ram in the machine for XP and my purposes, but I just wanted something very streamlined and so forked out the cash for NOD32, so dammit I want it to work now, LOL!

I take it many people here have uninstalled Symantec from their shipped T60's or whatever and installed some other form of Antivirus with no issue right? I mean it's not like Symantec is so tied into the Thinkvantage software that there is a conflict there that I'm missing? (I even erased any files in thinkvantage that were XML documents relating to symantec too though). The two programs run independently of each other I take it, Thinkvantage Software and anti virus software?

 

Oh and PS, no I didn't do that, I simply double clicked on it and went through the installation steps, but the only logon on my laptop is myself with administrator rights.

 

Vista has this strange thing that even if you are logged on as an administrator, when you install programs or run programs that require administrator level privileges, it will still install or run those programs with guest privileges unless you right click and choose "run as administrator."

I forgot the name Microsoft used to call this annoying user interface thing. But you can choose to turn it off.

 

Sorry NOD32 didn't work out so well for you. I have been using NOD32 with Vista home premium for a couple of weeks now, works like a charm. The best thing is, it can finish scanning my entire hard drive in under one hour.

 

Its ok, I do appreciate your help and everyone else's though, this forum is very useful. So far the Symantec Corporate Edition seems to be working quite fast and well compared to the typical Norton I suspect, especially since I am on XP and have the 2 gigs ram. Shame to have spent the money on the NOD32 though, I guess I should have tried the trial version first.

If this corporate edition starts to act up or become clunky I'll be back to trying to take it off, but in the meantime I'll try to get by with it. I'll check back on this thread if anyone else has anymore thoughts though.

 

AVAST all the way here

 

What OS are you running? The two Lenovos I have both run Think Vantage alongside NOD32 without problems. It might be worth joining the NOD32 forum at http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=15

There are very helpful folks there.

John

 

I've also used AVG Free edition for 7 or 8 years on my home PCs. I've never had a problem with conflicts, resource hogging, or crashing. I've never had a virus infection make it past AVG. In company PC's, I've had Symmantec, McAfee, and F-Prot, and have had various problems with all of them. AVG rocks!

The only trick is that Grisoft has made it a bit harder to find the free version on their website. It's at http://free.grisoft.com.

 

Thanks I'll check it out. I'm running XP Professional. It should work, I can't imagine what the NOD32 conflict is. But good to know it worked alongside you're thinkvantage software no problem.

 

Grommal out of curiosity what problems did you have specifically with Symantec? And was it the corporate edition you had problems with not the straight out Norton Antivirus you get in best buy, etc.?

 

If anyone is interested in nod32 go here for a 20% discount coupon code: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=40476

 

I do have NOD 32 on my T60 and it works just fine.

 

How did you install it? Did you make it one of the very first things you installed after you got your T60? Did you remove symantec first manually and with the removal tool?

I can't figure out why it would be giving me a hassle and nobody else. The only thing I haven't tried is to do a restore to the factory preset before I put any software on there, but using base administrator software to have symantec installed in the first place and THEN install NOD32 right off the bat before I put office or anything else on.

I'd be curious to know what your steps were before installing NOD32?

Thanks.

 

Actually I meant using base administrator (from lenovo) to NOT have Symantec installed in the first place upon doing a factory restore from the backup on the hard drive.