Norton 360 [OLD VERSION]

by Symantec

Product Features

• PC security software offers comprehensive, automated protection
• Defends against the latest online threats; protects important files
• Safeguards against online identity theft; automated backup
• Keeps computer tuned up for peak performance
• Provides 1-year license for up to 3 PCs per household

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000NA780M
• Item model number: 11206515
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 23, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (247 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,334 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #17 in Software > Networking > Security
  • #60 in Software > Utilities > Backup
  • #65 in Software > Utilities > PC Maintenance
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Norton 360 delivers all-in-one security for everything the computer users in your family care about. Easy to use, it provides automatic and transparent protection from viruses and spyware, fraudulent Web sites, phishing scams, hackers, identity theft, and more. With a renewable subscription, up to three PCs in your household are continuously protected, safeguarding your family when they play games, send email, download files, chat, or surf the Web. And transaction security features allow you to shop and bank online with confidence. Norton 360 also keeps your PCs tuned for peak performance and protects the data on them by making it easy to back up photos, music, financial documents, and other files and restore them at any time. Flexible options allow you to back up your files to CD, DVD, and USB devices. For even more convenience, you can also set up automatic backups to an attached hard drive or a secure online storage service* to protect your important files in the event something happens to your PC. And for enhanced performance, a smart background scheduler automatically schedules key Norton 360 functions such as scans, backups, and tune-ups so that they don’t interfere with your PC activities. *Requires high-speed Internet access; 2 GB of online storage included, with option to purchase more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Resource Hog - a Partial Explanation, July 14, 2007

By 

William L. Rowe (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Norton 360 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Under the heading "Resource hog that causes applications to lock", S.Page posted this comment:
"I also frequently have the CPU at 100% problem. It's the process ccSvcHst.exe. You can't kill this from the task manager, but you can stop and start from Services. But that stops Norton 360 and after restarting it can't fix itself, so I have yet to find an alternative to restarting my PC."

I have had 360 installed since April of this year. From time to time it would hog cpu, but it would clear soon enough. But today I had the ccSvcHst.exe problem S.Page describes. Most of the time ccSvcHst cpu usage would be in the 90's; everything froze. Rebooting didn't help. Couldn't stop it in Task Manager, or assign lower priority. This went on for a couple of hours. Now and again cpu usage would drop to ~60%, at which time the PC freed up somewhat and I could do some digging into the problem on the net. I found this explanation - that it is not just ccSvcHst.exe, but a deadlock between ccSvcHst and Windows XP update download. Here is what the guy wrote:

QUOTE
I have XP Pro ... when I installed Norton 360 (2007) I experienced the same problem experienced by others. I agree that it seemed to be Windows Update and Norton Updates and Scans running simultaneously, either conflicting or vying for resources. Inevitably ccSvcHst.exe would use up all memory and virtual memory making the machine unusable. Re-boots would continue the wrestling as each program tried to complete its appointed update task.
Solution for me. Switch off Norton 360's automatic updates and scans and let XP evaluate and seek updates at startup. Discipline myself to manually direct Norton 360 to do its thing when I leave my desk for meetings or over night. I do this almost daily. No problems for over two weeks since I took this approach.
The frustrating thing is that the Symantec chat techs don't let on that Symantec has any inkling of this problem. If they would just acknowledge the problem and fix it, they would not lose customers like they are now. They do not have the same almost monopolistic status held by MS.
END QUOTE

I switched off 360 altogether and rebooted. Lo and behold - closing down took about an hour while XP processed a couple of big updates. I am now running without 360. ccSvcHst.exe is still in the task list, and occasionally gets some cycles, but is mostly at 0%.

I will add a comment to this review when I hear back from Symantec tech support. I am interested to see whether they are in denial about the problem, as this guy asserts. Maybe there is an analogous political deadlock between MS and Symantec, each blaming the other for the problem.

217 of 237 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars May work well in the future, but avoid Symantec's online store, March 9, 2007

By 

PB Addict "PB Addict" (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Norton 360 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I purchased a new laptop and it came with Vista and 60 day trial of Norton Internet Security 2007. Because I am a registered user of a previous version of Norton products I received an offer directly from Symantec to buy Norton 360, 3 PC version for less than the Amazon price even with purchase of the download-for-a-year capability.

The good:
- The download and install of the product went smoothly in about 20 minutes.
- The protection is very broad and covers all the typical types of assaults.
- The controls are easy to manage and tweak.

The bad:
- After the download, whenever I go to PayPal the logon is prevented because the browser think's PayPal's security certificate has been revoked. Both PayPal and Symantec blame Microsoft, but it worked okay before 360 and it works fine on the Vista desktop I have protected by Live OneCare. The workaround is temporarily suspend anti-phishing protection, which 360 makes easy.
- 2 days after purchasing the software I went online to load Norton 360 on my second desktop. The site rejected my order number as invalid. When I logged in to the Symantec site, it shows I have an active license but doesn't show I have any orders. After 4 attempts I finally got a response from the Symantec email support team. It was obvious they hadn't read the details of my problem, only the header. They gave me the link to put in my order number to download, but of course that is the problem. The note also warns I shouldn't contact them about the same problem again for 7 days. I guess I could use my dime and queue up for who knows how long on their phone response support, but that doesn't seem cost effective for less than $50, especially when the result may be the same. I have contacted the email support team again, no response at this point. So I am less than a week into a 3 computer license with a year of download protection with only one copy working and no way to get the other copies. If they do not respond by the time my credit card statement comes I am cancelling the software payment and will unload the software.

I have happily used Symantec products in the past but was never reduced to using their download service or online support. It appears ignorance is bliss as my experience with the service and support is that they are extremely poor. So if you do want to try this product I strongly suggest staying away from Symantec's online store and get the CD. This should reduce the probability of problems and needing to interact with Symantec itself.

43 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Unstable Performance, April 6, 2007

By 

Electronic Gadgetphile (St. Paul, MN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Norton 360 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

Having serious systems issues with Windows Live OneCare at the end of my annual subscription I decided to go back to my old Norton standby in its latest format which had everything I wanted in an antivirus, firewall and backup suite. The PC mags gave it glowing reviews so I took the plunge. As others here mentioned, the install and registration took about 20 minutes and was painless. The initial scans went well and no malware was uncovered. When I booted up Outlook it sent my outgoing messages OK but kept bombing out on the receiving. Then the 360 software indicated a fault condition wherein the virus protection had been shut off. Pressing the "fix" button resulted in nothing. Rebooting the system solved everything until I ran Outlook which repeated the cycle all over again. I uninstalled the software, rebooted the system and did a reinstall of the 360. Same results all over again. I think I will stick with McAffee which seems to be more robust on my system albeit the scan times are longer.