Norton IS 2010 stops startup sound/jingle?? - anyone have the same or ideas?

Hiya

Have installed NIS 2010 on my stock system and noticed that my windows "jingle" has disappeared upon boot. I still get the login sound but no "da-da de daaaaa" that I had before

Spoke to Norton on live chat for 5 hours!!!! (rep remoted my system) they tried lots of different settings within norton but every time it didnt work.

Now, i have found that uninstalling norton does restore the sound on boot so to me it seems like a problem CAUSED by norton.

I know its rather insignificant but i quite like the jingle and dont see why it should disappear.

Would be interested to hear if anyone else has had the same problem or if anyone has any ideas on how to fix.

Also, any input on "the best suite available" free or fee based....im not bothered about a fee as long as i have the best protection available....

Cheers mukka's
Stevie.

 

Alright.

OK.

Im gonna give you the single most powerful piece of tech advice anyone ever will.

I speak from a compressed lifetime of experience.

I am going to write it in a way to understand. For you to understand, you must put yourselves in the shoes of a hacker and a virus writer.

But before that, some facts.

1: Norton internet security is the most used antivirus in the world.
2: Over the entire lifespan of all Norton Products it has never been effective in a real world scenario.

I managed a boutique PC store in a capital city for 4 years. We were the most well know, out there, highest rated store in the state.
This meant when someone had a problem with their PC, they came to us to fix it, even if the pc was not from us.
They were happy to pay the money to get it fixed even if it was under warranty, because we knew what we were doing.

The single most prolific problem I and others at the store had to fix was a corrupt norton antivirus, totally overrun by viruses and in most cases being USED by the viruses to do harm.

Norton is - in my 4 years of professional experience at the top of the game - the single worst and most useless, if not harmful piece of software ever invented by man.

Ever.

Windows Millenium edition comes a distant second.



Now, imagine you are a virus writer or a hacker.

You know nearly everyone has an antivirus so you need to get around it.
What is the most effective use of your time? You obviously need to target the most prolific antivirus out there.
Thats easy, its Norton. Now, due to the sheer crud that is Norton, its easy to not only bypass it, but use it as a delivery method.

Hackers love Norton because it is such a joke.


Now, next piece of information.

Norton has always been and will always be the SLOWEST antivirus ever.

It is utter total garbage in any way, shape and form.

Go back to whatever lying so and so that sold you this yellow box crud demand your money back.


Then, NUKE YOUR NORTON INSTALLATION FROM ORBIT.

The only real fix to a Norton install is to reformat your system totally.



Now, for the *fix*.

Once you have NO antivirus installed, get Panda Cloud Antivirus.

It is free, and is one of the best, most lightweight and highest detection rate antivirus softwares ever.

It also consistantly scores in the high 90's for reviews wherever you look.

Did I mention its free?


Never ever ever ever ever buy an off the shelf antivirus. Do the research, browse the web, read some reviews, and find something genuinely good.

Panda, Kaspersky, Nod, Antivir, Avira, these are all good, trusted, effective names.

Hope it helps.

Any questions or if you need more of the technical info on why norton is bad, just ask.

-Ash

 

Windows Security Essentials my friend. Free from M$.

 

+1 for that, also very good, very fast.

-Ash

 

great post by Ash, i concur 100%, i manage about 75 dentist & doctors offices IT needs and every time AV/IS comes up they want Norton, and i have to go through the whole summation, as i advise them, i would advise you if you have the mindset to purchase a high end machine, or equipment you should take the necessary precautions to protect it. $40 isnt alot of money just buy a decent end user interface like NOD32,Panda or kaspersky, or even AVAST. but like recommended before get rid of norton AV Instantly.

 

Thanks guys! - Thats extremely good advice and I will take it....Currenty, I have binned Norton and have used the removal tool to (hopefully) rid the system of it (tho i would imagine its still llurking is some registry values etc) and have installed the MSE from Microsoft in the short term.

I was looking at Eset NOD32 as a"pay for" suite.....also Kaspersky 2011 suite.
Had heard of Panda Cloud but wasnt aware it was free so I will look into that some more.

Question - Are the above good enough to use on their own or would i require any other additional prorammes to bolster protection?

I have used Malwarebytes free download in the past and was going to again with this system.....does anyone have experience or advice regarding using this??

Hey, and thanks again for the advice....part of the reason for doing this now is that i am using my "original" system as a guinea pig for this before choosing which one to put onto my brand new replacement m17 thats in my sig. below. - dont wanna mess it up or have to try and remove remnants of crappy av suites - just wanna get the right one and be done with it! LOL

EDIT: After doing a bit of research i found this: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5775&review=Best+Antivirus+2010+Buyers+Guide which was helpful. ESET came out top and looked very good in all areas.

Now, assuming this, I have seen that its available as a standalone av or a suite....which one would be best? - if i chose the standaloone, do i need anything else?

 

Only ever use one antivirus for a start.

Personally, while I really do love NOD32 it comes up with far too many false positives for me, due to the line of work I am in.

If you can put up with it, use NOD32, though Panda Cloud Antivirus has (and will always have) the highest detection rate of anything due to its design.

-Ash

 

Cheers Ash, thanks for the advice.....any thoughts on the malwarebytes tool??? - good/bad/not needed?

 

Not knowing how long you've been "in the industry" (I've got 24 years working retail and now self-employed doing PC and network admin) but are you're options about Norton based on pre-2009 products or actual, hand-on use of their current product line?

While I don't usually support "suite products", I do find that the 2009-2010 versions of just the NAV product are very fast, indeed, and none of my clients complain about any slowness when using it (unlike AVG which just killed my clients systems performance). NAV was redesigned for 2009 and ever since, it has performed well (for me and my clients).

Just curious because pre-2009 Norton products were a joke! Slow, bloated, etc. Now, 2009-2010 products are fast, and unobstrusive (and do take many editors choice awards).

I'm not saying any of the other products you mentioned aren't as good or better...I was just clearing up what might be some misconception about Norton products if based on the older versions only.

 

No, I work in another field now, I do infrastructure and virtual server management at the moment.

Part of my job involves analyzing client networks and restructuring them. Norton is still definately bad, though as you say not as bad as pre 2009 products.

Its the very core structure and makeup of the business that is the problem.

Norton relies on paying reviewers to get glowing reviews (one particular comes to mind by giving a reviewer an acer ferrari notebook to "keep once the review was done" which they had pre-installed norton on).

They also rely on scare bundling to get the majority of the business, so they dont really have to compete with the big boys per se, they just spam the less knowledgable.

-Ash

 

Hi Ashtefer

Thanks for being so candid. I am a business owner and we use to use Norton Corporate edition. The licences cost $60 but the cost to install keys and move keys were always around $300 for a network specialist to come schedule a service call and driving time. Work stations were always moving and new ones being added so it was costing me a small fortune to maintain security. Than I got the idea of using stand alone Retail versions of Norton as they are always on sale for $20 an we could install them ourselves and save a great deal of money. I talked to a Symantec Engineer and he thought this was a terrible idea as the retail versions of Norton are not real time and are not near as good as the Corporate editions. To make a long story short my company experimented with just about every retail product on the shelf. In the end we are using Eset coporate edition on our critical servers for real time protection and we are using free Windows Security Essentials on laptops and workstations. The cost of false positives of using various retail versions were a huge burden $$$ and since switching to MSE we have no problems. I agree 100% with what you are saying and for the average user an average antivirus program will do far more damage than the viruses they are suppose to protect against. If a coporate user is trusing Microsoft security essentials than I kind of question why some gamers are requiring such high levels of security. Just google MSE enterprise and you find many other like minded businesses using MSE.

P.S. The only time we have ever had a problem is when an employees daughter downloaded a game that contained a worm. We were running Norton Coporate Edition at the time. Too funny. For gamers I think Norton retail is one of worst choices for gamers due to its method of detection and subsequent false postives. Also you must consider who your internet provider is. If they are are reputable company than they are going to block a great deal of spam and junk themselves. Virus is only 1 of many threats.

http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report26.pdf

 

Here are some candid advice from another PC manufacturer:

"The only utility software we recommend installing are security programs to protect against virus infections or scan for malware. It is not recommended to install multiple anti-virus programs - they tend to conflict with each other. Additionally, we do not recommend using full "Internet Security Suites" as tend to bog down the system and have an increased chance of interfering with a game or other application. For firewall protection, we recommend using the operating system's firewall. It is important that the latest service pack and supplemental security updates are applied through Windows Update. For anti-virus and anti-malware, we recommend using Microsoft's Security Essentials anti-virus. You can find more information or download the program at www.microsoft.com/security_essentials." We advise against installing registry cleaners, uninstallers, software to manage the operating system, and similar utility programs. These types of utilities are typically unnecessary and can create problems such as instability and performance issues. Keeping the operating system clean with fewer installed programs will provide better results than bogging it down with unneeded software."

 

Some good points there Falcon , as usual!

My main priorities (as a home user) are probably same as anyone elses. I want to protect my investment (laptop) from infections and so forth. I also want a program that will do this relatively resource friendly. Again another requirement would be that which ever i choose, it isnt an absolute PITA to remove once installed (hate the thought of bits floating about unnecessarily) and most importantly, i want it to be as effective as possible.

I have MSE running atm (which you advised me of) and its working good i think. I agree with you and Ash regarding Norton pre '09 becasue they were resource hogs and not very good. I also can see Ash's logic in saying as the largest provider of security, they get targeted the most by hackers and such.

I personally dont mind paying for a "good" product if it does what it is intended to do. I think ESET (from a quick research) seems to perform a bit better than MSE and some others. I think I will avoid Norton once again as per advice and my own experiences thus far with it.

Basically, just need to get the right one - my list includes Eset and Panda cloud as of now....

Any one know if these are stubborn to remove should the need arise?

 

Hi Stevie

It really is a personal matter with no absolute right and wrong choice. I just got off the phone with my IT specialist to book an appointment as one of our servers (running ESET NOD 32 business edition) is having trouble updating a critical Windows Patch. I questioned him about why he recommended ESET in the first place and he is now advising me to use Kaspersky on the server. Seems like every year a new flavor of AV is in vogue. Each program handles Worms, Backdoors, Trojans, and other malware/viruses differently. Some handle worms really good but have poor virus protection or vice versa. Falcon who's advice I posted below are one of the only Computer manufacturers left in the USA who DO NOT outsource their service as it is still done in USA. The fact that they are recommending MSE speaks volumes.

 

Hi Falcon,

I have been using MSE for a few weeks now without issue...the only thing that does annoy me about it is long scan times. I have also read about sandboxing etc....tbh, the whole thing, like you say, is a personal choice....just wish there were a distinct market leader in terms of performance. Clearly, all major players can "sway" results in their favour with certain things as stated earlier.

A good ole general concensus on who finds what best is good and will help me find the best one.!

 

My quick scans are taking less than 2 minutes. Do a deep scan and defrag when you are away from the computer for an hour.

 

It really is impossible to get a general consensus on which scanner is best. There are a number of scanners which provide similar levels of protection, and each has their own benefits and drawbacks.

For example, one may be fast and have a good user interface, but throws up a fairly large number of false positives (incorrect detection of malware). Or one may be fairly fast and have few false positives, but have a horrible user interface.

I currently have a license for NOD32 to use at home. It does everything I need, and hasn't caused any false positives on my wife's laptop.

The only scanner I can say to stay away from is Sophos. It works, but it's slow and has a high false positive rate. I'm also wary of McAfee and Norton, as I've had bad experiences with these in the past (mostly on the machines of people I'm helping).

 

Whenever we had a machine in the past we couldnt fix due to rampant virus infection, the only real way to solve it without nuking the OS was to install panda antivirus in safemode and reboot.

This was before cloud came out by the way, but at the time we also tried the same thing with kaspersky, nod32, and avira.

Only panda could really clean the OS.

Thus it holds a special place in my heart, but MSE is a great new up and comer.

From the testing I have done myself, Panda cloud antivirus has the highest detection rate (in my specific real world scenarios, your mileage may vary) but MSE is the fastest.
Also, and this is the most important thing, Panda has the fastest definition updates you will find, as well as the best heuristic scanning engine when it comes to false positives vs effectiveness.

It all comes down to personal preference. I would recommend you try both Panda Cloud (not as fast, but doesnt use as much resources, and very high detection rates) and MSE (fast, good, solid) one at a time and see how they perform on your system.

-Ash

 

Cheers Ash....tell me, i am looking at panda and see that they have several options including global protection suite.....i dont mind paying for something thats gonna be of benefit but would it be worth it - again, its subjective i know but once i have decided which one to go for...thats it! - im gonna run trials of panda / eset before fully installing on my new system so any additional info would be great.

Btw, i think atm its between eset nod 32 smart security and panda global but if a lesser version of either of the above is just as good then i would go for that.

Advice welcomed!!!

 

Hi Stevie

When you add delete software in the control panel it often leaves a mess in the registry that often goes unnoticed. Over time this will greatly slow down your performance. If you are aware of the problem utilities often have free clean sweepers but from experience neither Norton or McCafe scrubbers cleaned the registry when I needed them to. Once your registry gets corrupted you will have to reinstall the operating system or clean with a registry cleaner and that is like rolling the dice. This is why a lot of gamers will just reinstall their operating system every 6 months. For an advanced system like yours that is often easier said than done. By the time you buy 4 or 5 AV programs to test, a couple of registry cleaners and a degrag utility you will have spent a tidy sum. If you really want to tie your computer up like fort knox try Zone Alarm as it will give you an inpregnable fortress and will give you a warning about cookies and security certificates every five minutes if you surf the web. Some people love Zone alarm but for the average user or gamer it is way too advanced.

 

Hi Falcon.

Think I narrowed my search down to two which were Eset smart security 4 and panda internet security 2010/11.

After a bit of delibertaing, i have elected to try a trial of Eset as i can but the cdrom box set if it all goes well for a small price.

If this proves like a good suite then i will buy said product and install via cdr on the new replacement (which has ABSOLUTELY NO AV on it whatsoever, not even trial mcafee)

I wanted to make sure i get a good product and Eset has had good things said about it already by many and by NBR - in fact, most people have said, yeah eset is a great product and its pretty near if not the top one.

Good enough for me i guess......have just registered the trial ware of eset and looks pretty good so far.

 

How many samples did you test, if I may ask?
And did you test Panda against MSE on similarly configured machines at the same time; real real-world comparative testing?

 

I found Norton Internet security from 2008 onwards to be a fine piece of software, before that it was terrible. I have moved on to Norton 360 since and I am not disappointed with that either. McAfee still seems to be a terrible piece of software, perhaps shown best by their attempts to give it away. Panda was good a few years ago but from what I am aware it has become bogged down and is not as good as it once was. Remember that the software world can change rapidly and a fair few of you seem quite out of date for IT professionals.

 

http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report26.pdf