Customer Reviews

Norton Internet Security 2007 [Old Version]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(49)

 

 

First of all, the product description for Norton Internet Security 2007 on this page is erroneous. The last line states: Includes: Norton AntiVirus, Norton Personal Firewall, Norton Privacy control, Norton AntiSpam and Norton Parental Control. That is not true. NIS 2007 DOES NOT include either Norton Anti-Spam or Norton Parental Control. What is frustrating is that NIS 2006 did contain them. Shame on me for having faith that the newer version would as well.

I am the type of consumer that has no problem paying a little more for something if I believe it to be a quality product. I will stay with a product or brand for years just as I would a physician or anyone providing a service to me IF I have grown to trust in their quality and integrity. I put Norton products in that category very easily. Until, that is, I purchased and installed the new Internet Security 2007.

The first irritation was the warning that I would have to uninstall Spybot Search and Destroy, a little jewel that I had found great comfort in its ability to help me to deal with spyware/adware over the last 2 years or so. NIS 2007, unlike its 2005/2006 versions is now suddenly not compatible with Spybot S & D. I begrudgingly uninstalled it and completed my installation of NIS 2007. The result is despite my use of Ad-Aware SE Personal and my inability to use Spybot, NIS 2007 is thus far unable to stop some spyware/adware and pop-ups which I have not had to face over the previous year with to any degree. Granted it has only been 24 hours since the installation, but it has been 24 hours of being very disappointed with this product. And as stated above, NIS 2007 is less the product that it was in 2006 as it has omitted Parental Control and Anti-Spam from the basic version. So, I in effect, received less product for the same price. What are they thinking at Symantec?

I will gladly return and edit this review if I find NIS 2007 to be better than I have detailed here. But if I don't edit this to a more glowing review, you can rest assured that Norton has seen the last of my financial support.

I've been an avid Norton Internet Security customer since 2001. But this version is extremely disappointing to say the least. First of all, it
nearly halves the performance of my computer. System startup is beyond
painful - XP boots just as quickly as ever, but then Norton gets control
and I can't even get the mouse to respond for another two plus minutes.
All system activities are slower - 20 percent or more. I contacted Norton but got the usual runaround - "delete temporary files, defragment your disk". I deleted the software and my system was back to normal. Tried the 'turn off automatic update' tip offered elsewhere in these reviews, but that didn't help at all in my case (although it may help in others?).

I bought the 3 license pack, and the other two users encountered similar
problems. We have all since removed the software. As a 20 year veteran
in the software industry, I can only say that this software was insufficiently tested before release and that you should look elsewhere
(McAfee?) for your internet security needs.

I have used Norton products for many years and currently have NIS 2006 on three of my four computers. I decided to upgrade the fourth to NIS 2007 and am grateful that I did not try to do this on any other computers. I will give you the short version as the experience wasted two days of my life. First let me say that I am not a PC novice.
1. The wizard did not work.
2. After manually installing, the updates hung and locked up everything
3. "Support" (what a joke) told me to deinstall all Norton products (all 2006/current versions) including System Restore to do the installation. (I have never heard of a product that was not compatible with others from the same vendor)
4. "Support" was impossible to reach, hard to understand and poorly trained. When they could/would not fix the problem they said they could send me to someone who could but that would cost extra.

I would sue Norton if it would do any good. I will probably never buy another Norton product for the rest of my life.

PS - Norton Customer Service has contacted me four times to check on the quality of service. No one has ever apologized, offered a refund or even a viable explanation so I suspect they just don't care.

I have used Norton products for 20 years and may never buy another. This is if possible a bigger piece of trash than Systemworks 2007. It edges out Systemworks because after the install of Internet Security 2007, Liveupdate is added to the list of features that no longer work, making it impossible to get future fixes to the bugs in both products!

By way of review, here's one previously satisfied Symantec customer's experience with this product. Basically, if you get tempted into buying the proferred online bundle that includes Norton Internet Security 2007 and Norton Systemworks 2006, then for the love of God do not install the latter! Furthermore, do some research online about buying another company's AV products!

Here's why: my Intel XP (SP2, all fully and newly patched) Dell Dimension came pre-loaded with Symantec anti-virus and internet security products. Having been nagged for a month to renew the subscription (gripe #1: Symantec pockets the $ an early renewal), and then downloading the offered bundle of NIS2007 and SW2006, and coughing up for the extra $10 for the right to download for more than 60 days (that's gripe #2 - surely that's a con), I did this:

1. Backed up, ran a virus scan, then uninstalled NIS2004.
2. Stareted the NIS2007 installation.
3. It complained about Windows Defender Beta (gripe #3: NIs should play nicely with AS programs, especially ones from nice Mr Microsoft).
4. Uninstalled Defender.
5. Installed NIS2007.
6. Registered and downloaded updates, then ran a full system scan as NIS2007 wanted.

Time taken - two hours!!! Everything seemed OK... new little icons and bars over IE.

7. Starting installing SW2006 (why, oh why...). Install halted with an exception: 'CCSettings WindowsException - the service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion. NGB MBR partions types Unit 0: 0xde 0x07 0x00 0x00. I guess if you're from the planet Hexadecimal that might make sense to you. Further bad news: NIS2007 no longer appeared on the start bar, and IE, Outlook, couldn't see the internet! Fortunately I have another laptop so could go Googling after much therapeutic swearing. Much advice was to uninstall them all and reinstall, along with lots of moaning about what a pile of poo Symantec's products are in general.

8. Tried to uninstall SW2006. More error messages like the one in 7. Bubbling sense of panic rising in lower bowels - rest of life on hold.

9. Tried to uninstall NIS2007 using its own . Would hang after a 1/2hr of chugging. Did this twice. Uh-oh, nightmare visions of having to do a complete re-install (no, I had not used System Restore Points, yes dad I will use it next time).

Total time endured - four hours!!!

10. On the lucky spare laptop searched the Symantec KM base for words like 'uninstall,' 'remove.' Nada, niet. Googled, and got pointed to a series of pages that eventually lead to a downloadable tool to "remove and uninstall NAV2007" - er, on the Symantec KM (gripe #4: go figure why their search doesn't turn that one up). Downloaded the tool and used a dongle to install it on the Dell. Got down on my knees and prayed. Ran it... and it successfully removed all Symantec products.

11. Reinstalled NIS2007... as steps 5 and 6... registered again, ran full scan again... and it seems to be working all OK. The Dell can once again see the internet.

12. Discover that NIS2007 no longer has the anti-spam features the previous version had (gripe #5).

Total time - six hours!!!

I remember the days when Norton didn't charge for its AV updates (yup, W98 days). I can see an argument for subscriptions, sort of, but in summary, the modern Symantec's buggy installation code, its fat and slow products, lazy product compatibility, sucky online support, and to cap it all frankly irritating money-grubbing has left me completely unimpressed. They make Microsoft look like an paragon of corporate virtue, and I never thought I'd say that.

So, Symantec is clearly the spawn of Satan! Never again! Thanks for reading my rant; sorry it took so long (but I feel much better). If this saves just one innocent little child from making the same mistake of using these Symantec products I'll know I've done some good in the world after all.

I attempted to upgrade to NIS 2007 after using NIS 2005 for quite some time. First of all, it tells you to remove Windows Defender and Spybot. Once the program was installed, it hung while trying to run liveupdate. Then after rebooting, which was almost impossible, it said liveupdate was STILL running. And CTRL-ALT-DELETE wouldn't work to see if the process was indeed running. Then, to top it off, Symantec charges $30 to talk to tech support. So I uninstalled the program and then my computer still wouldn't reboot. I will never buy another Symantec product.

After installing this product, make sure you go to the Symantec website and download the Norton Internet Security 2007 Add-on Package! This is the only way you will be able to utilize AntiSpam, AdBlocker, and Parental Control. For whatever reason, the software does not come packaged with these features but the website offers them as an optional download.

I have not had any problems with this version of NIS so far. I noticed that most of the reviews here were negative mainly because the software was not bundled with the features I mentioned here. Just wanted to let you all know that in order to utilize this software package to its full potential you must download the free add-on package at the website!

I purchased Norton's Internet Security 20007 about 3 weeks ago. In that time, I had to reinstall it four times for various hardware issues (faulty harddrive and bad O/S installs). On the fourth try, the program indicated that the product couldn't be activated and to call Symantec. After waiting 40 minutes to talk to a call centre in India, the told me that they couldn't renew the activiation, and to send the disk back to Symantec for a refund.

So as of now, I need to fork out more $$ for a new security product, while I awiat a refund that will arrive in God knows how many weeks. Please, learn from my experience, if decide to buy this product. After 3 activiations, your Norton's 2007 Internet Security is useless!

After 10 years using Symantec products, it's time for me to look elsewhere. Thanks for reading.

After years of using Symantec Norton Antivirus and related internet security products, the upgrade to 2007 seemed like a no brainier. That was until the install started. If you run into error 9999,171 you may as well give up, it is over.

Following the Symantec directions for resolution of the dreaded 9999,171 error caused the entire windows XP install to be corrupt and necessitated reinstallation. Believing that a reinstall was not all bad as it would clean up several old and no longer used software pieces and provide a clean base for installing Symantec I marched forward. Once XP was installed and current with the patches it was time to install Symantec again. No luck, I was still receiving the 9999,171 error.

Now it was time to get someone on the phone for support. This is a good trick since Symantec does not readily publish a phone number for support. The number by the way is 877-832-2810. Be prepared for a long wait on hold. During four support calls I experienced no less that 40 minutes on hold and the longest was over one hour. Support is provided by offshore resources in India so not only are you fighting a technical problem you must also overcome the language barrier.

The four separate calls to support resulted in multiple steps to clean up old installs, prep for install, reboot, reinstall, hack through the registry, and oh yah corrupt windows XP again needing a second reinstall. During the final call, the support rep finally gave up and indicated the Symantec could not be installed on this Windows XP machine.

I have since moved on to McAfee Internet Security Suite 2007. The install took about ten minutes and I am now up and running again.

BIG DISAPPOINTMENT - DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY!!

This fiasco of a program took 3 days of my time to get fixed and cost me more to pay a technician than it cost.

I too, have successfully and faithfully used Norton products in the past. This NIS 2007 is awful. The installation and uninstallation was atrocious, it corrupted many files on my computer to the point that the computer would not even bootup correctly, required a service technician to fix it (which cost more than the product did) and I have since changed to another Antivirus program. In the meanwhile I am searching for another internet security-type program to handle everything (parental control, spyware, adware, phishing, etc.)

I am disappointed with the product, disappointed with the email support service, and disgusted with the amount of time and money I had to spend on fixing my computer because I installed it in the first place.

Symantec has lost my business.