Has Your Hardrive Been Eaten Up By Norton AV?

@PastorP (1170)
United States
December 19, 2009 6:29pm CST
About six months ago I was noticing I was rapidly losing space on my hard drive. I began to check the properties of the major folders in use, including the one I created for my much of what I do. I narrowed the consumption down to the Programs folder. The I began to examine the Norton AV stuff. That was the culprit. I forget what all I did to try to reconcile the situation. I had also bought an external drive with like over 300GB to store stuff. When it got to the point I did not even have enough room to defrag, that was the last straw and I removed Norton. I now have AVG instead. I had something like 3 or 4 months left before renewing Norton and though technically I lost money so to speak from discontinuing Norton before it expired, I saved my computer. Btw, when I got rid of Norton, wow!, that really freed up space.
4 people like this
13 responses
@ronnyb (6113)
• Jamaica
22 Jan 10
Well it happpens to us a lot at work but the culprit is symantec not Norton.Apparently everytime it performs a scan it keeps a log in the antivirus folder and so depending on how many scans it performs per day ,and the measures taken ,this folder fills up quickly .The technician here at work basically had to delete the symantec folder and recreate our profiles
2 people like this
@KrauseHome (36448)
• United States
14 Jan 10
I remember having this same issue myself with Norton and wonder why or how they can control something on a Computer like that. Personally I would think they would be aware of what they are doing. Not sure if McAfee is any better, but it is what is included with my Computer when I bought it, but like AVG better. So I guess these companies have a lot to learn and improve on for sure.
1 person likes this
@PastorP (1170)
• United States
18 Jan 10
I ditched McAfee years back. It too was a memory hog, and back then it kept calling for patches so many times that i nicknamed it McPatches.
1 person likes this
@Harley009 (1416)
• India
20 Dec 09
Shalom PastorP, I don't think Norton will eat up hardisks, they are fond of viruses. Probably some virus might be spreading some files rapidly and Norton might be keeping it quarantining. But Norton will take control of all system resources and performance falls very much. I don't like AVG though, I am a fan of Avast!, KasperSky and Node32. Peace.
1 person likes this
@PastorP (1170)
• United States
20 Dec 09
Thanks Harley 009, but it seems like it was Norton. I removed Norton and the eating stopped, unless you mean it was virus Norton stopped and isolated, but maybe was still active? Anyhow, the eating has stopped. Thanks for mentioning the other AV programs which I will keep in mind. God bless!
1 person likes this
@vathsala30 (3732)
• India
14 Jan 10
Hi pastorp We too have Norton AV and Avast AV but so far we did not face any problem.
1 person likes this
@PastorP (1170)
• United States
18 Jan 10
Good to hear, but keep your eye on Norton so your hard drive is not eaten.
1 person likes this
@kaylachan (69339)
• Daytona Beach, Florida
20 Dec 09
Nortan has to be the worst anti-virous program in existance. I had it for about a year. (got a cd because it came so highly recommended) and it started to give my computer problems. It didn't work with my current provider and seemed to eat up more space and do things it shouldn't be doing (like warning me about the same"threat" over and over again even after I "took" care of it.) So I got rid of it and while I still have the cd, I don't plan on reinstalling it anytime soon.
1 person likes this
20 Dec 09
when i first scanned with avg it found sevra; viruses that norton hadn't
1 person likes this
20 Dec 09
i use avg its free and far superior to norton
1 person likes this
@PastorP (1170)
• United States
18 Jan 10
I agree about AVG.
1 person likes this
@amitavroy (4819)
• India
20 Dec 09
well actually i have never used norton av for a long time i have seen it work and i feel that it is very slow. and it is a mess. i mean i have a very fast computer but still with norton the machine use to be slow. and i dont like that. i mean you dont buy a computer to have an antivirus installed on your computer. so i am nt a user of norton
1 person likes this
@jpso138 (7851)
• Philippines
20 Dec 09
I have norton free trial when I bought my laptop. I did not upgrade and shortly after buying my laptop, I removed Norton. It consumes a lot of space. I am actually using another anti-virus. It is effective and very light on the disk space. I have been using it for a year already and have not experience any virus problem.
1 person likes this
@thezone (9394)
• Ireland
20 Dec 09
Hi PastorP, I stopped using Norton to for the same reasons, it just is too system hungary. After awhile it slowed down my computer so much it was ridiculous. I use a free anti virus now and it has served me well so far.
1 person likes this
@thezone (9394)
• Ireland
20 Dec 09
Hi Lamb, It was the same with me but after all the updates it does it made my computer unusable. I have heard so many other stories about it some good and some bad. I hope yours will be a good one.
1 person likes this
@benny128 (3615)
20 Dec 09
no this never happenned to me, but I stopped using norton years away when it became so unreliable and when they changed from a free one to a paid service, I dont like paying for an AV when I can get better ones for free. Glad you ditched it.
1 person likes this
@yinmm007 (605)
• China
20 Dec 09
I use 360 AV as my antivirus soft.I have never found my hard drive lost space quickly as i clean my disk every week using win 7 master.Form a regular habit of using the computer can avoid the problem of losing space quickly.
1 person likes this
@Java09 (3075)
• United States
18 Jan 10
I use Norton AV,and I'm having problems where my computer is slowed down,alot of times I'll be on Face Book or reading my email and then all of a sudden it takes me to Dell search engine.It's weird.I'm wondering if Norton can be screwing up my computer.Did yours act like this?
@Java09 (3075)
• United States
28 Jan 10
I think it was Norton,I removed Norton and installed AVG 9 and it works faster now.Your discussion made me look into my slow problem and Norton was the source of it.
@PastorP (1170)
• United States
18 Jan 10
Hi Java09. Mine slowed down, but I do not recall that it was taken to a search page. You might want to scan for a virus, but that usually takes time and memory too. I recently upgraded the memory in this computer to 1gig RAM.
1 person likes this
@sunnycool (12714)
• India
20 Dec 09
My friends bad experiences with norton anti virus so i never used till now and i am really happy with the Avast home edition and i try to update it daily so it identifies any viruses if present in my pc but you have to download a new version every 60 days coz the key expires else you get an full version for $19 for an year.Another AV is Quickheal really works good if you want to get rid of those trojan viruses and worms just schedule an boot scan and it quarantines all those affected files.good day.
1 person likes this