I agree that Norton has tended to become overbloated and thus a bad AV choice. Its also my understanding that some the newer Norton products are no longer bloatware. But law9933 is correct, with all the fine non bloatware Active anti virus programs out there, one is a total fool not to have an active antivirus running on your computer at all times. And because one can have one and only one active anti virus running on your computer at a given time, its a matter of choosing wisely.
But Nvidiaguy07 raised an excellent point because on line scans are a great way to hedge your bet. No antivirus is perfect and all will miss some viruses and trojans. And one can do an infinite number of passive on line scans to double check the active anti virus you have. Because the threats one product may miss may be covered by another product. I just googled "free on line virus scans" and got a large number of hits with bit defender, trend micro, panda, kaspersky, Nod32, and a host of other excellent names coming up.
But three warnings about such scans from the grim experience I got when I purchased a used computer that came with over 4000+ pieces of malware thrown in for no extra charge.
1. Wholesale use of these free on line scans is not recommended for those on dial up. It can take three hours to download the definition files each need to start a scan. But once you have the basic definition files on your PC, a on line scan redone only has to download the most recent updates.
2. An active antivirus is far more effective stopping the threat before it installs. Once the malware installs, it becomes harder to detect. And in my case, long after every free on line scan on the planet pronounced that infested PC clean, it still had over a dozen pieces of malware left. I finally had to post a hijack this log file on spywarewarriors.com to get the last bit of crud off. Take my word for it, its far easier to set up a layered defense that will keep the malware off than it is to get it off later.
3. The last warning is that some of these free sans will detect and then remove the threat. And others just alert you to the presence of a threat without a willingness to remove. And the disreputable companies will tell you you are chock full of malware regardless if you have malware or not.
I also wonder if Nvaidiaguy07 is a gamer who feels that anything slowing down his PC will detract from his gaming experience. In a sense, all security products will take some memory to run, but some are far less resource hungry than others. I would still recommend
you read up on security and try a light weight security mix and match layered security package. And stay as multi layered as possible until you start to see an actual slow down in your gaming rather than run no security at all. Or your gaming experience may come to a screeching halt as you have to totally reformat your PC as you do a totally clean install of everything. Its easy to check what each product takes using msconfig. In my case, I also try to keep things fairly light and notice no slow downs at all. But I am not a game addict but can understand that gaming does strain even the fastest computers.
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