Norton 360 - Anyone else had problems?

Based on stellar reviews in trade magazines, I recently ordered a 15 license pack of the new Norton 360, which is supposed to do everything in the background, provide online backups and be less of a resource hog than NAV 2006. As soon as I loaded it on several PCs I started having trouble with our pier-to-pier network (WIN XP Pro) and the PCs it was loaded on slowed down to a crawl. I managed to sort out most of the network problems eventually, but the only way to get the PCs working at a normal speed was to remove Norton entirely. Anyone else had this issue with Norton 360?

I'm having all kinds of issues with it. It hogs resources and doesn't backup correctly. I hate it so far. I got it for all our computers and stopped after loading it on 3. If I figure out anything I'll let you know... I wish the control over the configuration was better. The advanced config choices are not good. Best of Luck

Thanks! I have now taken all Norton products off all our PCs and downloaded AVG instead. No more network problems and our PCs work in real-time again. I think I'm officially giving up on Norton.

I had a problem with Norton 360, in that it would only run if the user had administrator privileges. After going through a number of Symantec support layers, I got a technician who told me changes had to be made to my Windows XP registry. I gave him control of my desktop and he proceeded to make changes in the "Permissions" section of the registry. He then ran the DOS command CACLS on 2 Microsoft DLLs. Well guess what? The Norton 360 problem went away, but it took me 2 weeks of agony trying to fix some of the seemingly unrelated problems that started to occur. It got so bad that I couldn't log on for more than 10 minutes without getting an error message that "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services has encountered a problem and needs to close. Sorry for the inconvenience." Of course, Symantec denied causing any problems and I ended up having to restore my system back to a prior point in time to make these other problems go away. Now everything is running fine except for the original Norton 360 problem The only solution Symantec is still advocating is the one that I believe caused my other problems, which I refuse to apply at this time. I'd rather live with the "Limited User" problem than to risk another round of Generic Host problems.

Yikes! I feel your pain. It took me 2 or 3 weeks to figure out that my networking problems were Norton related.

I bought Norton 360 a week ago, it was working fine, and now I simply can't open it. Why would this happen? Someone please help!!

More than likely, some Norton dlls got corrupted. It happened to me. If you go to the Norton website they have a removal tool that will completely uninstall Norton 360 and all other Norton products from you PC. After doing that, re-install the product and it should run fine. A better solution would be to get rid of Norton 360 altogether and wait until Symantec fixes all the bugs. They're using us as guinea pigs. Based on all the problems I've had so far, I think the product sucks and is not ready for prime time.

I gave up on Norton years ago because I spent more time fixing things for myself and others (like diving into the registry), especially after upgrades, than getting value from their products. There are many excellent, reliable, "hassle free" alternate products available today. I believe that many people simply stick with Norton because they were one of the "originals" and have used them for some time, going from upgrade to upgrade. Deciding to change can be difficult but this thread only convinces me that I made the correct choice. It seems to me that the people on this thread need to think about doing the same! If you want to go free, AVG or AVAST are good choices and if you feel more comfortable with paying, NOD32 is a good choice. NOD32 (www.eset.com) is not particularly well known but is a great product. It's main weakness is that the UI could be easier to use.

My personal experience has been similar with Norton and also McAfee branded home-based products. Norton 360 is not Symantec's recommended solution for businesses. In a situation with 15 networked computers, you'd have been better off using Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10.2 (available here at TechSoup Stock)- though you lose out on all the other features you bought Norton 360 for.

I've also used AVG in many of my clients' offices, they have pay-for and free versions. The free version is strictly licensed for home use. The pay-for licensing has many options. I usually get the Network Edition so that I can install the system in a centrally-managed situation where one server manages all PC Updates and configurations of scans. They do offer 30% discount to non-profits as well, but with Symantec back on TechSoup Stock I don't see many qualifying NPOs purchasing AVG for less than 100 users.

hi, im experiencing nearly the same problems and i was wondering how exactly you fixed these networking problems???????

try uninstalling norton of the server or main computer in the network

It took almost two weeks to get Norton 360 to function correctly once I loaded the program onto my computer. Chat support was way less than helpful and often dumped me out of chat after giving me their "fix" only for me to find that the fix had not resolved the problem. Unless you allow the program to "fix" its detected problems automatically, there is the constant need to check, fix, and update things. I have never been convinced that it truly works well. For the last 3 years I have used Symantec's Internet Security. That product has always required me to tweek endlessly for the first week, but then has run like a charm. I surf a lot and therefore run virus scans nightly. The old IS program almost always found a little something even when not malignant. After a month of use, 360 still has yet to find the first problem in scans. Am I lucky? Or is the 360 product failing to find less malignant problems? The advanced section for program control isn't very advanced and doesn't allow much control. I'm dumping the 360 product and either going back to IS or find another product from another company.

After my first install I had all kinds of trouble...

I uninstalled, then ran the Norton Removal tool available as a download from Symantec. It removes ALL Norton/Symantec stuff.

After reinstalling and setting the local network as trusted, 360 and everything else are working fine.

On all the other installs I ran the Norton Removal tool first, then installed. Havn't noticed any slowdowns or problems, even on older/slower Pentium 3's.