Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Ok.... a query if you please :)

Was advised to install Systemworks last year by one of our members, which i did..... only to be told by another I.T bod that he'd come across many a troubled caller that had their PCs messed up by using it :shrug:

I've gone from windows 98 to XP Pro...... but have been reluctant to install Systemworks to date.... want to stop umming and ahhing... so am asking you incredibly experienced people what your thoughts are :D

i found that while Systemworks was easy to use, and seemed to deal with issues that my old PC had, my old system was too wrecked for me to see any real advantage to having it :erm: I've also read that there can be problems with XP Pro...... i've read around the forum and heard the songs of praise for this software..... but thought i'd ask outright before i do the deed ;)

So..... Norton Systemworks....... saint or sinner? Anyone having problems with it and XP Pro?

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

I've not used the full Systemworks suite, but I've used Norton Antivirus 2004 (& 2003 before that) on Win XP Pro & Home without problem.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

I run norton system works 2003 on 2 of my pc's and 2004 on my wifes pc and my laptop.... all have XP on them (the laptop is the home edition - the others are the pro one) I've nerver had a single problem.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Thanks :) Already have McAfee running...... considering letting Norton's antivirus loose too..... but it's the rest of the package i'm considering..... i love my pc as it is....... want it to stay that way :D

Cool :) not sure what the other reviews and the criticism were refering to then :shrug:

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

A number of people I deal with say Norton is another word for evil.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

the one thing i think is evil about norton is their pay per incident technical support, i speak to people at work who are having problems with Symantec products that they have paid for (and IMHO they are expensive for what they are) and i begrudge refering them to Symantec. Their online support is difficult to navigate, and phone support is charged at £18 per incident. I don't think this is right, seeing as people have paid for the product, and in some cases paid to extend their subscription, i think they should be entitled to decent technical support.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Norton Systemworks is OK as long as you don't let it fix anything automatically for you. Always choose to select how it fixes something.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

i've used systemworks 2001,2003 and now 2004pro never had any problems with any of them,i would recomend norton very highly! but it does use a fair bit of your system resources!

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Dont bother with anthing called Norton. Your friend who works in IT is right. Just dont do it. WINXP doesn't need it

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

I'm not sure - I just got 'Internet Security 2003' with a new motherboard, I'll let you know how it goes :)

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Good advice. I am especially careful when it comes to "cleaning" the registry.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

I use the internet security product ATM, and before that I used the standalone NAV and NIF, I've not had any trouble at all, and some of the parental controls are great if there are little un's about.

M why don;t you make a back up of your PC and then try it, if it goes boobies sky wards then you can take it back :)

Oh, and it's nice to see you around here again :kiss:

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

The latest versions of NSW, NAV and NPF are unnecessary resource hogs.

I'd steer well clear ;)

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Their site is easily navigatable for me :confused:
I use NAV2004 at home, and corporate NAV at work, along with PCanywhere.
Never had a problem with NAV, PCA has thrown up some problems but the fixes for them have always been easy to find, and free.

At NTL they use McAfee, which merrily stood by and let nimbda and other viruses propogate throughout their corporate network.
If it wasn't for a contractor having NAV on his laptop, we'd never have known what was causing all the problems.
Had a friend with McAfee too, and the hassle she had to go through to update virus definitions etc was alarming!

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

It could be worse - I know quite a few people who don't bother with ANY anti-virus software, because 'it won't affect me' - or 'i'm not worth sending a virus to'

Then they get infected - and have to pay me to fix it :)

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Or "I've never had a virus before"
Without AV, how the hell do they know???

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Could be because they hadn't updated the dat files to tell mcafee about nimbda. Every antivirus software has to be told about new one's. The last company I worked at was hit by a virus. They kept it hush hush because it was in there machine room. After this however they have every machine updated and setup to auto updated from one of the server's:rolleyes:

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

or - 'i got one with my pc so i'm ok' - even tho it's four years old :)

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Oh it knew about it, merrily reported (after a manual scan) that nimbda was there, didn't prevent it infecting tho.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Then in that case again its down to the NTL IT department being as stupid as there boss's. They should have setup MacAfee to QUARANTINE or DELETE it

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

That's IBM for you :D

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Mmmmmmmm.... ok then..... it's pretty much what i thought :erm:


As far as the AV is concerned, i think we could argue which is best till the cows come home.... get milked.... and eventually carted off to the knackers yard ;) I'm sure we all have stories about which software let through which virus, i personally switched to McAfee when Nortons let through 2 Yahas and a Trojan at the same time, even though it was automatically updating :erm: McAfee saved the day....... but at work MSBlaster on an individual pc (not the network) was only really removed by the Nortons stinger, the McAfee one appeared to be faking it :D

Anyone tried to run the Nortons AND McAfee AV at the same time? I know you're not really supposed to :erm: but i think Lord Nikon mentioned doing it with no problem a while ago :confused:

I suppose my concerns with the Systemworks software as a whole have been more or less answered.... well mentioned anyway :D
The one thing i used to use weekly, if not more often was the Disk Doctor bit.... my registry keys were being swapped and deleted at a regular rate :erm: and yes..... i let it fix the problems automatically :eek:
What can i say apart from quote Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot....


So what can you expect :D

The advice seems to be..... as long as your AV is good..... leave well alone? I'm not a complete muppet as far as PCs are concerned but having to do lots of homework to find out what registry changes are needed or advisable are not in my life remit at the moment :D

Would perhaps installing Systemworks and only using it superficially, as in Ghost etc rather than using it to fix possible errors be a less problematic solution? And would using a another regcleaner/mechanic be safer in the long run?

OR!! how about my not doing anything about any of it unless i feel there's a problem to start with? :rofl: Why mess with something that isn't broken?


Big thank you to all for posting your comments :group: and......

Hello Dell :waving: and welcome back Defiant :D

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

My work used to use Sophos. Excellent AV prog. But then the license ran out & they switched to "Panda"....big mistake (IMO ;) )

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

If you have Norton Systemworks and let it fix problems automatically just try telling it that you want to manually fix the problems and then look at the different solutions it throws up with the first one being the one that it would use if on automatic. I have seen it suggest over 100 solutions for a problem with the first 90 odd being suggestions to replace a missing file with a file from an entirely different piece of software. Never, ever let it fix problems automatically. It is a good piece of software if used intelligently and you know what you are doing.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

about 50% of the problems I get with friends of my families PCs and people that ask me to have a look at their kit, are to do with Norton and their products.

Its antivirus is much higher in system resources than other programs that are freely available for private use - such as grisoft.com - AVG Free Edition.

The "Internet Security" on most of the peoples PCs I have found it on, has been the root of their "internet problems" with websites not displaying, again there are many free firewalls that all operate better in my opinion than these, such as Kerio or Sygate.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

ok ian....... we've already established that i have no idea what i'm doing as far as the registry is concerned (and i HATE having to repeat it lol) so won't be allowing Systemworks to fix anything that doesn't involve removing shortcuts ;)
But.......in that case..... is a regular regmechanic safer to use for a pleb like me? :angel:



We have Sophos running on the networked PCs and i'm sure that the NHS won't let the licence expire without renewing it ;) but we have a stand alone pc that i'd dl the AVG Free Edition on to until...... one of our I.T bods saw it..... once he'd stopped laughing, he asked WHY????
So i swapped it for AntiVir :shrug:

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Yea perhaps its because its meant for people who cannot afford a real antivirus package or those who just can't be arsed. The fact is AVG is not as good as the one's that cost. Well apart from Norton thats mostly used by NONE IT bods

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

This is where i need a Ooooooooooooooh smilie ;) Back on forum and form, eh Defiant? :naughty: but you're right in that we couldn't be arsed, i don't control the purse strings for my dept....... so cheapo freebies it had to be :) Although I.T bod extraordinaire did offer us a copy of Nortons ;) Now how professional is that :pp Anyway...... i am a non IT bod....... i'm an information professional not an I.T one :angel:

No comment on the regmechanic instead of using Systemworks for a non I.T bod then? :)

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Hmm not heard of that b4. Is it anything like this http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2048

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Yes, i suppose it is :) I meant this one specifically:

http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10....html?tag=list

If Systemworks is evil for those that aren't sure of what they're doing.... is this any safer? :)

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

AVG has detected stuff that programs like Kaspersky and Mcafee has missed before, but then again I keep them religiously up to date. And with all AV software theres going to be instances where stuff like detections and that overlap. :)

I wouldnt diss any of the "cheap" or free AV packages, as a website I remember reading, stated that theres nothing much more than prestige in buying a "paid" av package, in terms of functionality.

Business does differ though there I will agree. :)

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Avoid it at all costs !!

I have had nothing but problems with it.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

Wow...so much opinion on one program!

I think it would be fair to say that no IT professional likes Norton software aimed at the home user. This is becuase it takes away the 'fiddle' that they so love!

I'm not an IT professional, but I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty with the stuff. I've used System Works for a couple of years now, and 2003 was a fine piece of software. Not a problem running under XP Pro.

I tried 2004. As someone eluded to, it's far too much of a processor hog, and offers very little really useful stuff over 2003. Same goes for NIS and NAV. I've just paid for a year of updates for NAV and NIS, rather than upgrade to 2004, which is a little flaky.

Also, I've tried McAffee products over the years too. I cannot recommend at all any instance where I would ever let anything made by McAffee touch any of my hardware ever again, ever!

And from the accounts I've read recently, their new stuff is rubbish too!

So the bottom line is that NSW 2003 will be good for you if you want a reasonably hands-off experience of system monitoring and protection. One thing that bloody annoys me however, is that it keps claiming your HDD is fragged by a ludicrous amount, when it isn't.

Turn this feature off, and us XP's Defrag, or better still invenst in a standalone product to do the job properly.

Anotehr note....processor monitoring won't work on dual processor systems. Well that's OK you might say, and you might be right - but this also means that feature won't work on P4's with Hyper Threading, as it treats the single processor as two. Not that you'd need that feature anyway.

Re: Norton Systemworks 2003 - Good or Evil?
 

I think mcafee 2004 av and firewall are excellent :)