Do you leave Auto-Protect on in Norton?

[aphex]

?

 

[WannaFly]

yes

 

[Zim Hosein]

Originally posted by: WannaFly
yes

 

[Davegod]

not much point having it otherwise.

I only disable when gaming, or moving about very large/large quantity of files (esp .zip's etc) that I know are OK.

 

[Zim Hosein]

Originally posted by: Davegod
not much point having it otherwise.

I only disable when gaming, or moving about very large/large quantity of files (esp .zip's etc) that I know are OK.

I'm curious, why disable it when gaming Davegod?

 

[igowerf]

I leave it on all the time.

 

[nineball9]

No.
I've been a Norton user since my 386SX days and have seen the Norton products "dumbing down" every year. It's also aging a bit - its DOS roots need some updating. (I've owned and used a number of Norton/Symantec products and versions over the years: NAV, Utilites, Navigator, Backup, SystemWorks, Ghost among others.)

I purchased Norton SystemWorks 2002 a few years ago, but never installed it, so I gave it to a friend and installed it on his WinXP computer. I realized the evolution of Norton Utilities and NAV to the various incarnations of Norton SystemWorks made the product suite easier for the average PC user, but the overhead was getting out of hand and the level of customization available had declined.

I originally installed the first release of SystemWorks on my 1999 P3 running Win98, but turned off a lot of the product's features. I've since upgraded it to SystemWorks 2003 (and Win98se), but I decided the product was not what I wanted for WinXP.

When I got an XP system last year, I skipped SystemWorks and purchased and installed NAV 2004 instead. I turned off many (if not most) of the automatic features including Auto-Protect. I don't need the extra features, nor do I want the overhead of useless junk (to me). Moreover, I discovered that simply disabling a feature does not always work in NAV 2004! Instead, one must turn the feature on, then drill down through the options menu(s) and uncheck the sub-feature's individual boxes and then turn the feature off.

So I now have NAV 2004 as I want it without the extras I do not need including Auto-Protect. On another note, I've been using computers in one form or another since 1965, including working as a mainframe programmer/sysprog/sr. analyst for 18+ years. I have only gotten 1 virus (and no trojans, worms, or browser hijacks) in all those years. Granted, 1965 TTY's and 75/110 baud acoustic coupler modems didn't get viruses, but still, I practice safe computing.

 

[Psych]

To me, it is very dangerous to leave any commercial AntiVirus program running without constant autoprotection. After all, if you let the virus get onto the computer and EXECUTE, you might not be able to scan and remove it later. There is always residual stuff left behind even after the most thorough AntiVirus sweeps.

If anything, auto protection features are getting more efficient. I remember having McAffee AntiVirus on my '98 and it made everything about 50% slower. On my newer computer with Norton 2003, the performance difference is <10%.

Keeps its on is me suggestion.

 

[Davegod]

Originally posted by: Zim Hosein

Originally posted by: Davegod
not much point having it otherwise.

I only disable when gaming, or moving about very large/large quantity of files (esp .zip's etc) that I know are OK.

I'm curious, why disable it when gaming Davegod?

Well, fair to assume any singleplayer game isnt going to be infected, and since i have dialup and disconnect before playing SP anyway.

For multiplayer I also turn it off because I can feel the difference, the game does feel slower when it's running - more jerks, strange slight FPS lag... Might be because, or at least exaggerated because the game runs punkbuster (which scans memory and game installation for hacks and so on).

Some games seem to be affected by it, others I might only notice I've not disabled autoprotect if I go to re-enable it afterwards.


No way I'd disable the firewall though, that only ever goes off when running 3dmark or whatever, and only when PC is offline.

 

[jadinolf]

YES

 

[BFG10K]

There are far better ways to protect a box from viruses than running an anti-virus program.

I'm curious, why disable it when gaming Davegod?

If something is sucking up the CPU then those sucked up CPU cycles are not available for gaming.

 

[Looney]

Nope. I only scan when i download. Why have it on all the time? How often do you people download junk?