Norton Indentity Safe was my gorilla in the mist

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
16,028
4,798
136
Guys I've been fighting an unknown problem on my windows 10 machine and it was causing me all kinds of grief. I've even had internet explorer freeze up and crash while taking finals in my university course shell but could never pinpoint the root cause until today.

First thing when I try to log into my university I am greeted by a Norton warning that I am trying to access a malicious web site and it blocks me from accessing it. I try to uninstall the Norton vault and it won't let me forcing me to download a special removal utility that doesn't actually uninstall it and leaves a tsr behind that you won't know about unless you take a look at your active programs in task manager. I had to manually close it and then deleted the directories it was operating from.

This led me to search the registry where I find the startup which then leads me to the windows error reporting section and the localdumps where every single program that is error reporting is tied directly to Norton. I am manually searching and deleting every single Norton related key and entry in my registry on every single pc I have as they all were running this garbage maker Norton identity safe. I was already using last pass as my primary password manager but having Norton blatantly interfering with my browsers is just too much and is the last straw with them.

I am currently running zonealarm firewall and avast antivirus on my pc and will never again install any Norton product on my pc's. If you've been experiencing difficulties with your browsers and run the Norton vault I would implore you to search your registry error logs rather than event viewer and see if Norton is tied to them.
 
Last edited:

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,419
7,600
126
Do it the easy way use MS Defender, it's free!
I've had issues with avast also, and I'm pretty sure it's what hosed my boss' xp machine when I uninstalled it. I don't recommend anything but defender anymore.
 

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
16,028
4,798
136
Thanks for sharing your experiences. So far this year I've had issues with Norton and Malwarebytes 3.x and I'll never use either of them again. What irks me the most about Norton is how they force you to hunt for their special uninstall tool that doesn't really work forcing you to manually remove the menace from your pc.