Norton Anti-Virus running in the background?

Can someone please comfirm if this is true.
I have a Dell Inspiron 1521 running windows vista home premium.

Out of the blue, My CPU shot to 100% and stayed there until i unplugged the AC power. As in everytime the Laptop was plugged in, the CPU shot to 100% until i switched to battery and then it was fine.

I called customer service and the guy suggested i "msconfig" and disable all start up programs and also stop all non microsoft services. I did that and all is fine.
Laptop is faster, everything is good, problem solved. CPU now at 8% with nothing running....love it

I was concerned that my norton antivirus no longer starts up. The customer service guy assured me that it was still running in the background.

Well i haven't had any live updates since the fix, and i'm worried that i don't have any antivirus program enabled!!!
Does anyone know if Norton is really running in the background??
i would freak if i get a virus

 

If you are willing to ditch Norton, do it and use avast or AVG. Both are free and available on download.com. Norton is known to be a resource hog anyways.

The fact that they are free might make you feel insecure, but I'm using avast! Antivirus myself and I love how little memory it uses. I'm sure that it can protect you well enough.

What I don't understand is why the CPU Usage goes to 100% when you plug in your laptop...

 

I'm on a Mac at the moment and haven't used Windows regularly for quite a while. IIRC, though, you can click Ctrl/Alt/Delete and check which processes and apps are currently running.

 

A lot of maintenance programs that run in the background are often set by default to be off when you're unplugged to save battery power - e.g. certain background defragmenters and possibly some background AV scans.

As others have mentioned, open up task manager and see what's running. If Norton is running, it will have quite a few processes (they won't actually say "symantec"...I can't remember what they would be exactly...maybe nis.exe or nisum.exe for NIS...). Another good indication is whether the Norton icon is on your taskbar - by default, the icon's set to show up if your background AV shield is on.

 

it is not listed as running in the task manager.
so i guess i have no virus protection....
i was gonna abandon norton anyway after my subscription runs out.

as for the CPU thing, i have no idea. apparently some application was conflicting with another and the tech guy couldn't figure out which one so he suggested i disabled all.

 

i have 11 processes running:
desktop windows manager, 3 instances on windows media or media center, win. explorer, task manger & scheduler, 2 instances of side bar and firefox.

 

WOW. How do you only have 11 PROCESSES running in Vista?

 

The suggestion above to install AVG or Avast seems like a good idea to me. If that's an idea of interest to you, make sure that Norton/Symantec is completely gone from your machine before actually using another AV. Download, but don't install it until Norton has been uninstalled. Running more than one AV on your computer can case conflicts and even more problems.

BTW, 11 processes? That's excellent, provided that your machine runs properly.

 

If you disabled all services in the services tab then you may have to check each box to enable each services (after a reboot for each one applied) to isolate the problem. That's a lot to go through. I would first see if you can re-enable all services and leave the startups disabled. If your laptop still works OK after this then work to re-enable each startups (check, apply, reboot, etc) to isolate the program that is causing the problem. When you see the processor being utilized 100% you can use task manager to find out which process (besides System Idle Process) is using up the majority of the CPU time.

 

Thanks n640nec, i will try that eventually.
i really like it the way it is right now. its really fast, so i don't think i want all those start up programs back. i am most concerned about not running an antivirus program.
I guess i will uninstall norton and try Avast.

Is a regular uninstall enough to completely remove norton or is there something else i should do.

thanks guys for all the input. greatly appreciated!

 

I would do a manual search, and then use an app called RegSeeker to get rid of any remnants of Norton/Symantec. You could also use the Norton Removal tool.

FYI, there are folks here who would disagree with the use of RegSeeker, or any other Registry tool. If you decide to use one, do so carefully.