Is Norton 360 killing my computer speed?!

[DonJuanMair]

Argh im editing some pics on photoshop cs4 and im having to restart my comp all the time! itll work fine for a few minutes and then go really slow.
the only thing i have running is CS4 and Norton in the background, i put it in idle mode and it still seems slow.
Wondering if anyone can help?

[DonJuanMair]

i have safari running and CS4 and my cpu usage is 2% at the moment and my ram is 2.09gb (i have 8gb ram) so it shouldnt be slow should it really?

[basroil]

I would say it's safari rather than norton killing speeds (assuming not mac).

Sounds more like you are using 32bit photoshop and it's maxing out it's 3gb ram during use, closing the program should clear that without a restart. There's also a chance that you have something accessing the hdd a lot, and that can cause slowdowns, especially if you don't have an NCQ capable drive.

[AxxisPhoto]

Norton is known to chew up a lot of memory(IT nerd here.) But you do have 8GB. What is the mem usage in Task Manager?

[basroil]

Norton is known to chew up a lot of memory(IT nerd here.) But you do have 8GB. What is the mem usage in Task Manager?

It does, but only when in use. in idle, perhaps 20mb for 360 v3. Endpoint? looking at 5mb.

[MaxxuM]

Wow basroil, right out of the shoot it's Apple's fault.

There are a million reasons why this may be happening; how about a little diagnostics before the surgery, eh?

Norton has had some pretty bad press in the past for poor AV/Firewall implementation, so it's logical one would want to start there. How about doing this first:

1) Look at your startup items. Disable them all and see what happens. If that fixes it then start reactivating, rebooting and testing until you find the culprit.

2) No joy with 1? Then uninstall Norton (fully), reboot, then clean up with CCleaner (2 times), reboot and see what happens. You may need a special program to uninstall Norton fully (Norton leaves crud behind).

3) Still no luck? Then start doing a good cleanup of your computer. Uninstalling everything that is not necessary, deleting leftover folders and update the OS.

[DonJuanMair]

i dont think its safari at all because even when i dont have it running its slow. I think its my graphics card. I turned off Open GL on CS4 and its running smoothly now. Although i would like to upgrade my graphics card because i did like that feature.

OT how much would a decent graphics card cost to run Open GL?

[davidfig]

Norton is a piece of junk. That ridicules bloatware has been getting worst. Over the last two years I have had a dozen friends come to me for help with their ailing computers. Hardly work at all. So I remove Norton and everything's normal again. Then I install antivir.

Here is Northern California (Sillycone Valley) there were giant billboards about Norton Antivirus. What were they selling? That its really speedy fast now. To me they are admitting how messed up it was.

[basroil]

i dont think its safari at all because even when i dont have it running its slow. I think its my graphics card. I turned off Open GL on CS4 and its running smoothly now. Although i would like to upgrade my graphics card because i did like that feature.

OT how much would a decent graphics card cost to run Open GL?

If it's not a mac, any $40 card will be good enough. If it is a mac, only mac pro can have parts upgraded, and then it'll be about $150 for the cheapest

[MaxxuM]

i dont think its safari at all because even when i dont have it running its slow. I think its my graphics card. I turned off Open GL on CS4 and its running smoothly now. Although i would like to upgrade my graphics card because i did like that feature.

OT how much would a decent graphics card cost to run Open GL?

Before you start picking out graphics cards, I would do a little more diagnostics first.

[MaxxuM]

If it's not a mac, any $40 card will be good enough. If it is a mac, only mac pro can have parts upgraded, and then it'll be about $150 for the cheapest

The Product "Norton 360" is PC only as far as I've seen.

[basroil]

The Product "Norton 360" is PC only as far as I've seen.

Thought so too, but OP keeps saying safari... If he has safari on his PC, he's got bigger issues than just norton ;)

[DonJuanMair]

lol i dont like windows explorer and i dont like firefox

[MaxxuM]

Don't like Firefox... oh the sacrilege! lol

It's time Mozilla lost the fat - they're becoming a victim of their own success (feature rich = software bloat).

[DennisW1]

Norton is a piece of junk. That ridicules bloatware has been getting worst. Over the last two years I have had a dozen friends come to me for help with their ailing computers. Hardly work at all. So I remove Norton and everything's normal again. Then I install antivir.

Here is Northern California (Sillycone Valley) there were giant billboards about Norton Antivirus. What were they selling? That its really speedy fast now. To me they are admitting how messed up it was.


Norton was a good product when Peter Norton was writing the code and selling his own software. When Symantec got ahold of it the product slowly went straight to ****. It's now one of the biggest pieces of bloatware on the market and its protection capabilities aren't any better than say, the free version of AVG.....matter of fact I've been using AVG Free for a while now and find it to work quite well with none of the mess that Norton makes of your computer.
Your problem may or may not be related to Norton, its reallly hard to diagnose such issues in an internet forum without a lot of system logs to look at, but you might try totally uninstalling Norton, including using something like CCleaner to tidy up after the mess it leaves, and see if that cures your problems. If that was it, then look into a couple of the more streamlined anti-virus programs like AVG.

[Kafn8td]

My wife bought 360 for her computer and I was a little hesitant at installing it. With that said, it seems to work much better than the old Nortons.

[basroil]

lol i dont like windows explorer and i dont like firefox

Use chrome then, it's also webkit based. There's a reason why apple pulled safari support in less than 6mo, it caused a lot of problems just by being installed, and it was an easy way to get viruses... who would have thought it, Apple made it easy to get more viruses... Uninstall that garbage now and go with chrome, some of your issues will go away, others may not depending on what else is wrong with your system.

Norton was a good product when Peter Norton was writing the code and selling his own software. When Symantec got ahold of it the product slowly went straight to ****. It's now one of the biggest pieces of bloatware on the market and its protection capabilities aren't any better than say, the free version of AVG.....matter of fact I've been using AVG Free for a while now and find it to work quite well with none of the mess that Norton makes of your computer.
Your problem may or may not be related to Norton, its reallly hard to diagnose such issues in an internet forum without a lot of system logs to look at, but you might try totally uninstalling Norton, including using something like CCleaner to tidy up after the mess it leaves, and see if that cures your problems. If that was it, then look into a couple of the more streamlined anti-virus programs like AVG.

Norton 360 v3 is much better than v1 or v2, much smaller install (half the size), and great improvements to speed and memory footprints. Not as good as the symantec av products, but much better than the closest rival (mcaffee)

[CliffordPhotography]

Yes.

Norton is terrible. Get it off your computer.

[Bsmooth]

Not sure about killing speed, but the automatic renewal feature has to go. Not sure how many of you got surprised by this, but I know I did

[Moppie]

Argh im editing some pics on photoshop cs4 and im having to restart my comp all the time! itll work fine for a few minutes and then go really slow.
the only thing i have running is CS4 and Norton in the background, i put it in idle mode and it still seems slow.
Wondering if anyone can help?


You really need to provide a lot more information.

What spec is your computer? (we need to know everything you can think of).

How big a file were you working on, and what were you doing to it?

What is happening that is causing you to need to restart it?



There are a million reasons why this may be happening; how about a little diagnostics before the surgery, eh?



Exactly.
This could even be a hardware issue, faulty ram stick, failing HDD, over heating etc.



The current versions of Nortons AV are VERY light weight.
They listen to the customer feed back and rewrote everything making it as light, or even lighter than its competitors.

The current version of firefox is blaotware, it reminds of the old bloated resource hogging versions of Norton. I can understand why you would want to use safari :)

[DonJuanMair]

its fine now guys, i said that on page 1 :)

[basroil]

lol i dont like windows explorer and i dont like firefox

i dont think its safari at all because even when i dont have it running its slow. I think its my graphics card. I turned off Open GL on CS4 and its running smoothly now. Although i would like to upgrade my graphics card because i did like that feature.

OT how much would a decent graphics card cost to run Open GL?

its fine now guys, i said that on page 1 :)

Not sure if you can call that fine though, the program's still broken ;)
Check for new drivers, usually that fixes up OGL issues with photoshop. If your card has less than 128mb ram though, it's pretty much useless for photoshop and it is a good idea to turn off OGL mode

[DonJuanMair]

its my graphics card its pretty ****, i need a new one.

[basroil]

its my graphics card its pretty ****, i need a new one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121292
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121310
will be able to do anything you need them to in PS, including having a 10 layer 5dmkii file open.

[DonJuanMair]

very cool! thank you very much!

[Rayk]

Norton was a good product when Peter Norton was writing the code and selling his own software. When Symantec got ahold of it the product slowly went straight to ****. It's now one of the biggest pieces of bloatware on the market and its protection capabilities aren't any better than say, the free version of AVG.....matter of fact I've been using AVG Free for a while now and find it to work quite well with none of the mess that Norton makes of your computer.
Your problem may or may not be related to Norton, its reallly hard to diagnose such issues in an internet forum without a lot of system logs to look at, but you might try totally uninstalling Norton, including using something like CCleaner to tidy up after the mess it leaves, and see if that cures your problems. If that was it, then look into a couple of the more streamlined anti-virus programs like AVG.

I agree, came away from Norton a while ago and went to "AVG", no problems, changed over my wifes & friends PC`s to AVG, all very happy.

A few years ago Norton was fine, but now it is a like a beached whale.

[DonJuanMair]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121292
or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121310
will be able to do anything you need them to in PS, including having a 10 layer 5dmkii file open.

just ordered the top one and i uninstalled norton, things are running smoothly so far. Will install the graphics card and then ill turn OpenGL back on because i miss it!!

[davidcrebelxt]

A little OT:

Even IF norton's not the hog it used to be, no way I'm going back to paid AV programs... honestly I can't believe how many people still use them. (They have their place in corporate environs, or if you feel need for heuristics I suppose.) Amazingly, I can't count how many people I've told over the years about the free options... yet they STILL feel the need to pay a yearly fee. And this includes people on limited incomes!

I've started using the free Microsoft Security Essentials, myself. Seems to have very small impact on resources. If nothing else, you avoid the upgrade nags and ads from the likes of AVG or Avira.