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Norton may slow computers down

ALERT!!

Today I saw a client with a slow computer. I removed Norton Antivirus and the computer instantly regained the speed of its youth.

Later in the day I saw another client with a slow computer. I removed Norton Antivirus and the computer instantly regained the speed of its youth.

There seems to be a trend here because over the past two years I have seen dozens of computers with slowness problems. After removing Norton Antivirus the computer instantly regained the speed of its youth.

Now, this could just be a fluke thing.


I am not ready to release a verdict until I have seen it happen more than just the 70-80 times that I have already witnessed it.

When I remove Norton Antivirus, I typically replace it with AVG Antivirus. In about a 20 percent of the instances AVG has found a virus (one of those times was today). What? A virus on a computer that had Norton installed? It seems that this is the case.

Once I have AVG installed and the viruses eliminated, the computer continues on with youthful vigor.

If anyone wants to challenge my statements that Norton slows down a computer and doesn’t catch as many viruses, I will be happy to challenge them to an antivirus duel.

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130 thoughts on “Norton may slow computers down”

  1. I would give the edge for ease of use to AVG, but both products are great and update on their own well.

    1. I had AVG and it missed a virus. I had to install Norton to remove it and now my computer is soooooo slow and always crashes. Now what do I do? Do I put AVG back in or do I keep Norton/ I’m so confused.

      1. Keep in mind that no antivirus can prevent viruses or spyware from entering our computers if we invite them by clicking on rouge links in emails, tainted search results, or attachments to emails that we shouldn’t open. I would recommend taking Norton off your computer and using either Avast (Windows XP) or Microsoft Security Essentials (Vista or 7). I have instructions for both in the Top Tips section over on the right hand side of the page.

  2. I agree that there is something dreadfully wrong with Norton Anti-Virus 2007 … even worse is Norton Internet Security. Between Avast and AVG … for older people who are NOT savvy computer users, which is easier to use … to keep up on updates, etc? Are the free versions enough OR should they use one of the paid versions?

    Thanks

  3. Hi Rick!

    I’m looking for a good antivirus all around protection for my laptop. I disabled my macafee as it slowed my system down to much. Same for much earlier versions of Norton.

    Will the new Norton 360 also slow my laptop down??

    Thank you!
    Valerie

  4. I would stay away from all Norton security products if you want your computer to operate with any appreciable speed.

  5. XD The problem is I dont thing norton is bad :D. Had never problems with it.
    And when you hack norton you have all the features enabled so you have the full produck. For examle Norton 360v2. Its relly great šŸ˜€

    1. Ā£300 lighter and one PC totally crashed atfer trying to do win7 service pack 1 and unusable and another series 9 samsung laptop so slow it was the worst I seen a pc work on the net… issue after days of expert help… NORTON360… the worst thing I have ever done on my PC since upgrading to Win7… it worked fine when i was on XP using Norton internet secruity.. shame as I was a fan of Norton but 100% not now..

      1. Sorry to hear about that, but unfortunately an all too common story. I too was a huge Norton fan at one time. Thanks for your comment!

  6. WTF!? I am not a Symantec employeer!!!!!!!!! How could I be when I talked about Norton crack!!!
    And I thing that you only want to make Norton bad!!

    NORTON IS ACTUALLY THE BEST ANTIVIRUS!!! It slows down your computer when you dont know how to handle it!!!!!!!!

    1. norton has slowed my computer down to a crawl and what use to take a few hours to scan now takes a night and half the next day….

    1. Ok anonymous, so how do we fix it. I have Norton 360 and my computer is way to slow. The sad part is that i have been utilizing the same program for over 4 years, but now it seems that is so slow that i get sleepy waiting for my computer to work.

  7. Pingback: Is Norton Antivirus Making My Computer Slow?

  8. alright, im actually agreeing with this statement. my laptop is only 1 and a half months old and some days. so my norton subscription ran out a few days ago and im not gonna pay to have it back. one of the few things they said could happen was along the lines of “Renew your subscription to lower the risk of your computer slowing down from virus attacks!!!!” okay, for some odd reason, even though it doesnt have many files, and the only game i play is Runescape. why the hell is it being so slow now??? i havent even been to any malicious websites or anything that could have had a virus so im simply amazed at how slow my computer is going now. im running a Toshiba with windows 7. ive seen slow computers and had them, this seems more like my computer is being slowed down by Speed Gear :\. dont get norton.

    1. Same here, Norton was already installed with my new laptop, it expired two days ago and I have had to take it to Curry’s where they have had to restore the system because it had a virus!! Very coincidental don’t you think? I had Avast on mine but that didn’t make any difference. I see the plot very clearly. Norton has a deal with Curry’s and pc world. Curry’s puts a trial Norton on yr PC and tries to sell you the product. When you don’t buy the product or renew Norton trial one, Norton leaves a virus on your computer (made by Norton) and Curry’s/pc World fixes the problem for Ā£50. Everyone’s happy!! except the customer

  9. and another thing, i find it strange the only program and website that seems to be moving fast is the Norton home page and norton anti virus :S

  10. Hi
    i hav kaspersky internet security 2010 and it is going to expire today. i want to buy a new antivirus. i hav read the ratings for Norton Internet Security 2011 and they are really very good. But by reading all of these people’s comments i hav a doubt that should i buy it or not.In the ratings it had the minimum boot time,scan time,memory usage and the time to install.

    Pls. Pls. pls. pls. help
    Thanks

    1. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER buy Norton. I bought a brand new computer, right out of the box it was running at 99% CPU and between 50 to about 76% of that was ALL NORTON. It was so slow I had to run a Norton removal tool just to get it off my computer as to where ADD/REMOVE programs would just sit there and do nothing. If I tried to close it out NORTON would even start using more of my CPU up. And if I tried to delete the file folder it wouldn’t let me because Norton was in use. And it wouldn’t let me close it out. So YEAH, if you have even HALF a brain in your head you will stay the HELL AWAY from ANYTHING with the NORTON OR SYMANTEC name. Unless you just like for your brand new computer to act like one from 1999 with about 20 viruses.

  11. I use Avast, comodo firewall and spyware search and destroy. Great free tools to use. It has kept my comp virus free from 2003 šŸ˜›
    Not exactly 2003 it from 2008 šŸ˜›

  12. I found exactly the same thing. It seems as though whenever my Nortion antivirus was about to expire, my computer would slow down. This time, i did not renew and my computer was positively sluggish. On a whim, I decided to completely uninstall Norton (I got Avast instead) and my computer is SO much faster again. I am wondering if they have something where Norton will slow your computer down exponentially when Norton expires so people will think they have a virus and will re-subscribe? I will never buy Norton again.

    1. This exact same thing happened to me. My Norton expired and I decided to use Webroot, which I have heard great things about. Thought I had uninstalled all of my Norton programs. Well, after a billion pop-ups and my computer slowing down to a crawl, I opened up my programs and apparently there was still something from Norton still there. I uninstalled an now my computer is running at lightening speed.

  13. Hear Hear.
    I also am in a position as a tech to verify this. OMG!!! when will people realise that just because a business has a great marketing campaign and a
    financial arrangement with MS (Microsoft)that the product is not always going to be up to par.
    I use Avast not AVG as I have seen better results and detection using Avast, also I have found viruses on machines previously running AVG after running Avast over them. Each to their own.
    Anyway, BRAVO Rick, well done for saying so on a public forum.
    I for one am so sick of those with “a little knowledge” (the old adage of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing kind of applies here), singing the praises of probably the worst and most ineffective resource hungry anti-virus software available today. BRAVO!!!

  14. My browser is extremely slow and I have cable internet. Pages don’t load and have to be refreshed repeatedly – could this be a Norton 360 problem as well?

  15. My norton just expired 2 days ago on my new computer. It has a processor with a max speed of 3.0 ghz (i7) and 8gb of ram. When i tried to run my computer after work today it was slower than my old computer. I had to restart it twice. I uninstalled norton and it works fine again.

  16. Rick took the leap and diconnected Norton a leap of faith computer responds much better comcast. still a lttle slow but I think it is a comcast problem put on Microsoft essentials very pleased Thank You
    I now I need a new computer as she is an old lady like her owner Thanks again Margielou Peters

  17. I have NORTON (payed version) and my pc just runs slow and freezes evrytime for like 10 -15 secs i also had that one problem when i right clicked something windows explorer would crash. To fix the right click problem i had to install ShellExView and acually DISABLE A SYMANTEC (third party extension) TO ACTUALLY MAKE MY PC WORK! i payd for something that actually shud improve pc performance but does exactly the other way it made my pc crash.

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