Advice Request Is Norton any good these days? Should I buy this antivirus?

Please provide comments and solutions that are helpful to the author of this topic.

Can Norton Security Standard on its own protect a PC?

  • Yes

    Votes: 44 81.5%
  • No

    Votes: 10 18.5%

  • Total voters
    54
  • Poll closed .
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ForgottenSeer 58943

I'm not sure the problem is in Norton. I have been using it since 2010 and I never had any problems with it.

It absolutely is a problem with Norton (Consumer), and the problem goes back to as far as 2014.

Cannot connect to symantec server | Norton Community

Cannot connect to the Norton server | Norton Community

Failure to Activate or connect to Norton Servers | Norton Community

Cannot connect to Norton Server error message | Norton Community

Also, some of us are very experienced IT pros, and we've seen this error and have been unable to resolve it. Including extensive troubleshooting, up to and including wiping windows itself to try and resolve it.
 
F

ForgottenSeer 58943

Also, just to test.. I installed enterprise versions, including SEPC without any trouble at all on the same system. So yes, it is clearly Norton Consumer and some stupid bug dating back half a decade that they seem totally incapable of fixing. Or better yet, even bothering to fix. It's hard to fathom how much loss of revenue this bug has caused them. How many people get this and just get a refund and walk away?

sepc.png
 

L0ckJaw

Level 19
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Content Creator
Well-known
Feb 17, 2018
870
Not one to give up with things that annoy me.. I found an offline installer, got it installed, live updated.. Oops.. Same issue with the issue they supposedly already fixed. The last time this happened and I didn't want to give up I let the Indian Dude work on my host machine on a VLAN for 3 hours. He first said 'your machine is infected probably', I showed him I JUST created that clean image 15 minutes before calling him. Three hours later he fixed it, but doesn't know what he did to fix it but I immediately wiped the machine because he screwed up about 5 other things.

Why are companies like Norton so pathetic? There are literally dozens of threads for these same issues. Can you imagine the impact this issue has on their bottom line? There is such a massive disconnect from Norton Support up to Norton Engineering they probably never actually get these matters escalated.

View attachment 197775
Did you try a reboot of the system and try to activate again ? ( i never seen this error before )
 
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Dhruv2193

Level 10
Verified
Well-known
Nov 7, 2016
468
It absolutely is a problem with Norton (Consumer), and the problem goes back to as far as 2014.

Cannot connect to symantec server | Norton Community

Cannot connect to the Norton server | Norton Community

Failure to Activate or connect to Norton Servers | Norton Community

Cannot connect to Norton Server error message | Norton Community

Also, some of us are very experienced IT pros, and we've seen this error and have been unable to resolve it. Including extensive troubleshooting, up to and including wiping windows itself to try and resolve it.
I had same errors many times. I successfully activated it by logging into my company domain admin account but the product was norton security premium. Maybe this solution helps.
 

Quassar

Level 12
Verified
Well-known
Feb 10, 2012
585
Norton have still goot detection ratio and you can install trial version for test stability and not issue with your PC. befre you decide buy.

But remember is still Antivirus and not matter from wich compay its come its cant handle all virus whole world..
So keept it on mind and think about to put yet other layer security on your system.
 
F

ForgottenSeer 58943

Frankly, if we all download the same package from a Norton server, just how do some people have a problem. I'm convinced that somewhere you have some kind of mistake, which is a problem for you.

We know it's a huge, widespread issue. There are thousands upon thousands of threads, videos, blogs and commentary on this bug dating back around 5 years. I'm pretty skilled with computer and network engineer and know how to debug, when this error comes up I've attempted a wide array of fixes, including eliminating the network as the issue (DMZ).

Nevertheless, Norton appears to not even understand why it happens, but it only happens with their buggy consumer offerings, not their quality enterprise/corporate offerings. To be honest, Norton generally cares far more about their corporate stuff than the consumer offerings so that's not surprising. If this popped up on their corporate/enterprise packages they'd suffer the consequences fairly rapidly. As I demonstrated above, I can install all of their corporate offerings without issue.

The funny thing is, even fake Norton support sites are capitalizing on this bug to wrangle customers.. It's that common.

Cannot Connect To The Norton Server - 24 x 7 Norton Antivirus Help
 

LDogg

Level 33
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Top Poster
Well-known
May 4, 2018
2,261
Never would use Norton. Based on so many bugs I've had with it in the past. The thread sums up my thesis too slightly :p

~LDogg
 
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ForgottenSeer 58943

Never would use Norton. Based on so many bugs I've had with it in the past. The thread sums up my thesis too slightly :p

~LDogg

IMO Norton is a good protect and quite protective when installed on 'clean' systems. Consumer versions of it are fairly buggy and prone to bad updates here and there, but otherwise it's quite effective and lightweight.

Their corporate offerings are really good IMO. They require some tweaking, as it's suicide to deploy SEP vanilla without proper tweaks, but once tweaked it pretty protective when in managed mode. SEPC is in a class by itself to be honest. Lightweight as hell, cheap, and if you use Syshardener with it you are gold for protection and SEPC has NONE of the bugs of the consumer edition. SEPC is $48 a year for 5 devices is pretty good for a great product.

Symantec/Norton products are one of the few with a real firewall that can sustain 1000/1000Mbps without throttling, stuttering, or choking itself. It's nice to still have a real firewall available in a suite when everyone seems to be abandoning them.
 

LDogg

Level 33
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May 4, 2018
2,261
IMO Norton is a good protect and quite protective when installed on 'clean' systems. Consumer versions of it are fairly buggy and prone to bad updates here and there, but otherwise it's quite effective and lightweight.

Their corporate offerings are really good IMO. They require some tweaking, as it's suicide to deploy SEP vanilla without proper tweaks, but once tweaked it pretty protective when in managed mode. SEPC is in a class by itself to be honest. Lightweight as hell, cheap, and if you use Syshardener with it you are gold for protection and SEPC has NONE of the bugs of the consumer edition. SEPC is $48 a year for 5 devices is pretty good for a great product.
Agreed. Corporate products side of Symantec seem to be very good. The home user/consumer side seems to be crap.

~LDogg
 

Burrito

Level 24
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Top Poster
Well-known
May 16, 2018
1,363
In my household, we have 4 machines on Norton Premium. I have one machine on SEP. One machine with a left-over license on G-Data. And one on McAfee. I definitely like Norton Premium the best. It's smooth as silk. Although... some have complained that when it's updating, it slows everything down. And that is true on some machines. I just don't care about that.

I've never experienced the problems that Sly is referencing -- but I don't doubt at all that there could be an issue.

I do like the granularity of the controls in SEP better. But Norton Premium gets faster software updates... and cloud backup...

I like G-Data too.... but I think it's just nostalgia. I played around with that AV for years and got it dialed in perfectly. But it's not to the Norton standard.

I keep a free McAfee license going just because I have a friend who works there.... and that is it. It's a crappy AV.

I believe Norton is the 3rd best AV overall for protection -- and tests bear this out. The first and second place finishers (Kaspersky & Bitdefender) have issues I'm not willing to put up with.

And Norton paired with Cylance (I credit Sly for getting me to look at this product; a product that I get free through my employer but I had written off for multiple reasons...) ------ I doubt much can get past that combo.
 
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ForgottenSeer 58943

Jeez Burrito, do you run the other ones because you feel guilty?

I have about 12 comped licenses now and don't use any of them except Cylance for one reason or another. Even my ISP gives us unlimited F-Secure licenses and I don't use it. No idea what to do with the licenses since I don't really work on other peoples PC's anymore (thank god) and I put friends/family all on a single Panda Advanced Unlimited license pack (w/SG Settings).

I quit buying AV's though as they always end up uninstalled and money wasted. So one way or another I will roll with comped licenses going forward and exit the security theater of these AV's.
 
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shmu26

Level 85
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Jul 3, 2015
8,150
Question for Norton users: in order for Norton to communicate with its Chrome extension, does it launch cmd.exe with non-elevated privileges?
I am asking this strange question because I know that Norton Family does that. And Kaspersky also does that.
I am not so fond of this behavior, because it interferes with my cmd.exe protection, which I manage through SRP.
Or maybe the Chrome extension isn't even so important anyway, so I shouldn't worry about it working right?
 
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