Norton has become somewhat notorious for gobbling resources and conflicting with other functions. I am personally familiar with Norton installs crashing entire systems and taking the data with it. Other people have had smooth sailing. ( I've had mixed experience but when it starts messing up, it can REALLY mess up, sometimes leaving no way out!) In any event there are better anti-virus programs out there, most of them cheaper and many free. My personal favorite over the years has been Avast!....but there are many others which I'm sure other posters will suggest.

(FWIW, I switched to Mac a year ago and left ALL such worries entirely behind.)

I have never had a problem with Norton until I got the new one in March,,,it works fine, but takes FOREVER to load!!! I wont be using it next time it expires. Gonna try another one. This is NUTS!!!!

I really do like Avast! It updates automatically, almost daily, and has a screensaver which is also the scanner, so anytime I leave my computer, I come back and it has done a scan. Best of all, it's free.

I can only share my personal experience. I bought a new computer a year or so ago and also paid for the Norton anti-virus software program.
Computer worked fine for a while; then small things started happening with the most annoying being the big slow down.
Took said computer to my local computer repair guy, and he advised removing Norton completely. He said he has seen many computer problems go away by removing Norton -- that's the short version of his thorough explanation.
He suggested installing the FREE version of the 'AVG anti-virus software program by Grisoft' since I am a home user.
I gave him the OK to do just that and have had no trouble since then.
You can find the website for AVG by doing a Google search.

Grams, I'm curious. I downloaded the free Avast and find it so confusing I plan to get rid of it. I find it so complicated I can't even figure out if it's scanning. When I click on the icon, a 'boom-box' sort of screen appears. When I tell it to scan, a box appears 'scan archive files'. I igorne that and tell it to scan. Then it tells me it can't scan archive files. I have no idea what it's doing, but I'm not even sure if it ever scanned my computer in the two weeks I have it.

Maybe you have the paid version and it works differently?

Jane

Jane, I have the free version, and I never tell it to scan. It has a screensaver that self-installs, and after my computer is idle for the time I have set for the screen saver to activate, it automatically starts scanning. The background is the shooting stars thingy, and a little box moves around recording the number of files scanned. When it is finished, it tells you, and the screen saver part just keeps on shooting stars at you. I don't even recall ever trying to configure anything about Avast, and it scans my incoming e-mails. I think I did check for it not to scan outgoing ones. You do have to register it, but that's free. I find it just sits down in the bottom tray and does its thing, and every morning shortly after I go online, a little box pops up and a male voice announces that it has updated. I find the interface of AVG rather clunky, so that's why I stopped using it, although I think it's also a fine AV program.

Thanks grandms. I have never seen what you describe. It sits in the bottom tray and it does announce that it updates (I don't like voices in the A.M) but I've never seen it scan. If I click on the icon, a box appears which says Web Shield. It's just a setting screen with slider bars. It's set to Normal as default. There is no button to tell it to scan. If I left click the icon I get a Boom-box. There's a round scan button. If I click it, it says 'can't scan archived files.' That's it! As far as I know I could be full of virus. It doesn't say whether it ever scanned. Obviously, I'm missing something.

Maybe the screensaver is the way to go, but I don't want screensavers on my machine and no shooting stars. Just a scan.

I hate giving MS more business, but I may try One Care. But I do love Zone Alarm and hate to lose it.

Thanks,
Jane