Customer Reviews

Norton 360 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(148)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Norton 360 comprises four integrated modules:

(1) PC Security is excellent
(2) Transaction Security is very good
(3) PC Tuneup is useless
(4) Backup and Restore is dreadfully bad.

(1) PC Security includes antivirus, firewall, spyware scanning and email scanning. Norton is known for having the best Antivirus software on the market - if you believe the reviewers at cNet, PC Magazine and others (I do). I had been using Norton Antivirus and Norton Utilities for almost 20 years. They did have a problem a few years back, when installing the product would often crash the computer, and uninstalls required manually editing the registry. Still, Norton ALWAYS protected against viruses. A couple years ago, Symantec fixed these install and unistall problems, but still, Antivirus hogged system resources which slowed the computer down significantly. All these problems seem to be fixed now in 360. (I have been using 360 for two weeks.)

(2) The Transaction Security module is an anti-phishing filter. Over the last couple weeks, the thing popped up a few times, warning that I surfed to a site that was asking for personal information, but whose security information changed from the prior screen. Each time I was about to place an order from a small-name vendor who redirected me to a web commerce site. Who knows - I could have been sent to a site with a .ru extension!

(3) The PC Tuneup module consists of four components: (A) Clean Up Internet History, (B) Clean Up Intenet Temporary Files, (C) Clean Up Windows Temporary Files, and (D) Disk Optimization. Vista and XP do this anyway for free. Why no registry cleaner? Why no duplicate file finder? The Tuneup module is useless.

(4) Backup and Restore is poorly written, confusing, and gives a false sense of security. It seems to be a front-end for Symantec to sell web storage space on their servers, for a fee. The interface is ridiculously slow and confusing. Simply calling the module up causes it to search the entire hard drive for 15 minutes. If you change the backup schedule and want to check if it is set up properly causes another 15 minute search - on a brand new HP dual core PC. Traditionally, there are two ways of backing up: Full Backup and Incremental. You do a full backup, say, once a week (which takes several hours), and incremental backups daily. If the hard drive crashes, you simply restore the full backup and any incrementals. The 360 interface makes it look like this is the case, but this is not true. The instructions say that "full" and "quick" backups are set up and run independently, but this is not true. A schedule can only be set up for one backup method at a time. And "full backup" still presents you with choices of what types of files to backup - which means it cannot be doing a FULL full backup! I guess "full backup" means only ONLY your data is safe, whereas "quick backup" means SOME of your data is safe. In either case, operating system files a drivers are not backed up. You can manually select the whole drive with hidden switches, but such a complete backup will takes hours each day. What seems dangerous is that the uninformed user might feel that checking all the little boxes in "what to back up" means everything IS backed up. Not so.

One half of Norton 360 is very good - which is why it should be called Norton 180. You are covered only halfway. Look for backup elsewhere. I will go with Roxio Backup MyPC when it becomes available for Vista.

It has been said that Norton runs on an old platform that should have been re-engineered years ago; but Norton chooses to save its money (and increase it's short-term profit margins) by simply piling more code on top of the old code. Norton 360 may well be the proof that this theory is correct. My entire computer system has slowed down by roughly 50%. Webpages that I frequently check and that used to pop up immediately now need about 1 minute, or longer, to load. Some sites, like my email account, are often blocked. I have to disable Norton to check my email. And when you disable it, you lose all protection because Norton's default setting requires disabling MS firewalls, etc. Downloads and uploads now take longer.

You may ask: What about tech support? Ha, what tech support? Maybe if I was a full-time techie, I could figure out a way to tweak this beast into a functional and user-friendly addition to my software family. If you like challenges, buy this. If not, save your money.

I used norton 360. A month or so after installing it, it stopped my browsing capability. Completely.

I couldn't launch its configuration utilities, I couldn't uninstall it. Attempting to do so would result in a process starting, but no interface ever being displayed. When I attempted to uninstall in safe-mode, it told me to reboot to normal mode and uninstall... What an idea.

This product is utter [..]. I will never disgrace my system with a norton bloatware product again.

If I could have given it fewer stars, I would.

I have been using Norton anti-virus software with moderate satisfaction for a few years, so I thought I'd go for this product. Sad day. The program is highly unstable. It asks you to activate it again and again. It places an intrusive and useless toolbar on your screen. It fails to detect spyware that other programs catch (after I uninstalled it, I installed McAfee and it immediately found a bunch of rascals busy sending out information on me). It slows your system to a crawl. It constantly sends up banners crowing about itself. If you have a thing for Norton or Symantec, wait a year or so for them to get the bugs out. There's lots of 'em. Otherwise go to the competition.

I don't know what it is about me, but I keep buying Norton products. Maybe it is because of the guy with the glasses on the cover? Or because "Norton" sounds nerdy?
Norton Ghost rarely if ever works seamlessly. It'll go through several hours doing a backup to my 120gb external drive, then at the last minute (usually in the wee hours of the morning) will stop and inform me there isn't enough space on the destination drive. Why something can't figure that out before it starts is way beyond me.
360 is a whole 'nother story. It refused to back up; doesn't tell me why, just tells me it can't. Tech Support is out to lunch, at least when they are stateside. I'm not sure what it is called in India. Tea?
And to update my Norton Antivirus (which failed to protect me against some amazing virus last weekend) I bought it, downloaded it, and then it told me I had to uninstall - not just my old Antivirus, BUT EVERY GODDAMN SYMANTEC PRODUCT ON MY HARD DRIVE!!! Yes, I am shouting. All of them. Antivirus, Ghost, 360, Winfax. Make sure you have your installation disks around so you can re-install them afer we delete them. The fact that I have Winfax 98 and don't even know where the disk is I guess is my problem.

Anybody out there from Norton? I mean, are you guys for real? What kind of products are you making, and who is giving you marketing advice?

I want to one-click back up my hard drive - all of it, so all I have to do is one click to restore it, so if anyone knows any competitors, please email me.
thanks

I'll make it quick - unlike my computer once I installed this garbage.

It slowed my computer to a horrible crawl. Whereas before it took a few seconds to open a web page, after I installed this, it took minutes. My productivity went down the drain. I was really surprized that this happened since I had been happy with previous versions of Norton security software.

After many calls to Norton's ESL Third World support personnel I finally found out that this software runs in the background . . . . and just keeps on running and running and running.

Nevertheless I had faith in Norton and tried to resolve the problem over several weeks by calling "support" personnel, installing and uninstalling and installing again. Eventually I passed the statue of limitations for a refund and so I lost my money, unistalled Norton for the last time and put it in the trash can where I normally put my garbage.

A real disappointment. Absolutely not recommended.

I bought this as a replacement for Norton AntiVirus 2005.

* I uninstalled Norton AV 2005, rebooted, uninstalled LiveUpdate, rebooted, deleted a bunch of Norton and Symantec files, and then installed and activated Norton 360. Everything seemed fine, but Norton 360 has regularly failed to authorize itself at startup and couldn't reactivate until I rebooted. Norton Live Chat support (which was pretty good) just confirmed that the Symantec Core Lc service was set up incorrectly.
Folks, any program which CANNOT install itself over the same company's own products is unacceptable for 95% of computer users!

If the product authorizes OK, it seems fine, unobtrusively doing whatever it does. But several times it has pegged my CPU usage. Each time SvcHst.exe is the culprit. You can't kill this process from Task Manager, and if you stop/start it from Services, Norton 360 dies and won't successfully start, so you have to reboot.

And I have a host of minor complaints:

* You can't select and copy text from dialogs like Activation. You can't even select and copy text from Norton's Live Chat window! Very frustrating when you're trying to tell Norton about a problem.

* I get a JavaScript error from the e-mail support form (because I have MSIE set to alert on errors). I have MSIE7 and Windows XP SP2 with all patches. The form seems to work anyway.

* The product is excessively dumbed-down. As people have remarked, there's no direct link from the big green checkmarks to the advanced settings for each. Also when I had Activation failures there was no explanation of the failure, just a [Try again] link. Also the product creates literally dozens of log files but there's no links to them when there's a problem or explanation of these.

* The firewall doesn't have a rule for ssh. That's OK for a dumbed down product, but it doesn't even know that TCP port 22 is for ssh.

(Update June 2007, more problems:)

* The Backup doesn't know about Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail files (you can add the entire mail folder to backup but it's clunky).

* More user interface suck-age: You can't select text in backup reports, so when it says C:\Documents and Settings\long\long\long\path-to-file could not be backed up, you can't copy and paste the path, nor is there any way to open the folder of the file. You can't resize the backup report window.

(Update 2008, more problems)

* In every backup the program fails to backup one or two random files, for no obvious reason. They're usually unimportant. But there's no way to tell it "Consider that backup a success", so even though I've set for monthly backups, Norton will daily demand that I backup!

* Internet Temporary Files Cleanup invariably crashes in ccSvcHst.exe.


* I've tried to tell Symantec Tech Support about these failings and get them to acknowledge them and, I hope, fix them in an update. It's obvious Symantec is not set up to accept feedback from customers.

So, installation hell, superficial polish but lots of flaws, and for some-to-many users it'll go badly wrong. Like most Norton products over the years :-( :-( :-(