Norton 360I bought this latest release from Symantec. Norton 360 offers a wide range of protection. From viruses, to phishing scams, fine tuning your PC. It even does back ups. Once I got it installed and configured, I was very impressed. Once I got it installed…it only took 2 1/2 days. 2 1/2 days of hell. 2 1/2 days of not having any protection on my computer.

There are two ways to solve your Norton 360 Woes…

1) The easiest method – Get rid of it and replace it with AVG antivirus software. (updated Oct. 7, 2011 – I USE THEIR PAID VERSION)

OR

2. Follow all of these steps to get yourself out of Norton 360 Hell.

Here are some simple steps that Symantec will not tell you in their FAQ. If you follow these steps you should be successful in your installation. All of this information is based on numerous online chats with Symantec Technical Support. These instructions are not for a computer novice. Use these instructions at your own risk.1) Background Processes

Certain background processes can prevent a successful installation of the new software. First thing I suggest is completely shutting down your old security suite.

Next you need to disable potential conflicting background processes. All I can do is show you what worked for me. I have no way of knowing what you run for software so if you run into problems, chances are you have a conflicting background process.

If that is the case then you will have to start going through each process, disabling it and trying the rest of the steps again. Any disabled processes should be re-enabled after you get Norton 360. To re-enable a process just undo the this step that I am about to show you.

To disable a process:Click ‘Start’ > ‘Run’ and type ‘msconfig’ (without quotations) into the textbox and click OK. The System Configuration Utility will launch. Click the ‘Services’ Tab.

MS Config Services

In my case Symantec had me disable Ad-Aware 2007, Atheros Configuration Service, ATI HotKey Poller on this tab. Once these services are deselected then click on the ‘Startup’ Tab.

MS Config System Startup Tab

You may not have some of these items on your computer so don’t be alarmed if you do not see them listed. Symantec had me disable FreeRAM XP Pro, msmsgs, and qttask. FreeRAM XP Pro is a freeware RAM utility to help free up RAM on your computer. msmsgs is MSN Messenger, and qttask is QuickTime.

Once your selections are made then click the OK button. You will have to restart your computer. Undoubtedly you will get a pop-up window saying that your computer is in selective startup mode. Just ignore this message. Everything is fine.

2) Uninstall Existing Security Suite

Before attempting to install Norton 360, uninstall any Norton Security Software from your computer using their uninstall utility. Your original software came with a built-in uninstall option. Do not use that. Use the one available on their website. Depending on what you have, choose the correct uninstall by clicking here.

After running it you may have to restart your computer.

3) Search and destroy
Using the Search feature on your computer do a search for the word ‘Symantec’ and manually remove any remaining uninstalled components of the previous security suite.

Repeat process, searching on the word ‘Norton’.

4) Edit the Registry
The registry has to be manually edited to remove any remnants of the software. The uninstall that we just ran should have taken care of it but in Symantec fashion it may not have.

I tried to use CCleaner to edit the registry but it would not remove everything. I don’t know why, because I have used CCleaner for a long time and have never had a problem. I can’t prove it was screwy Symantec software, but I would bet my money on them as the culprit.

Make sure that you have permissions to edit the registry. To do this your Windows login account must be set to administrator status. Only an administrator can do this.

To edit the registry Click Start > Run and then type ‘Regedit’ (without quotations) into the textbox and then click the OK button. From the registry screen the first thing you MUST do is backup the registry.

Click File > Export and the Export pane opens.

Regedit

Make sure that you set the export range to ‘All’, then navigate to the folder you want to save the registry to and click the ‘Save’ button.

Within the registry editor navigate to the Symantec folder. Click the (+) button to the left of ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE’ to display the contents. Click the (+) button to the left of ‘Software’. Scroll down until you see ‘Symantec’. Hi-lite it and click Edit > Delete. You will be asked to confirm this. Click the ‘Yes’ button. Note: If ‘Symantec’ is not listed then that means the uninstall utility worked properly.

5) Install it now

You are now ready to install Norton 360. Just follow the on-screen instructions and the installation should go smoothly…hopefully!

6) Still having problems?

If the software gets to about 50-75% installed and then starts uninstalling itself and wanting to generate an error report, then you have a background process conflicting with it. That is what happened to me. It would not be so bad if the failed install and uninstall did not take 45 minutes each time. You need to find the conflict as described in Step 1.

Final Commentary

All of these problems could have been avoided if Symantec would not have used the consumer as a beta tester. This product is a good one but it was released before all bugs were worked out. This is typical of profit-driven companies trying to rush their products to market because of self-imposed deadlines.

As of posting, I see that they now have a new version in beta. I would suspect that they will attempt to address the concerns I have outlined in here. Let’s hope that this blog entry becomes obsolete quickly.

Power, Performance, Protection. ParetoLogic products put you in control of your PC’s performance and security

Thinking of buying Norton 360? Read these free reports so you are an informed buyer:

Symantec Suffers from Corporitis

Symantec – Good Products – Bad Delivery

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