I’ve recently received a lot of support request calls from people who had unstable systems or systems where programs no longer did what they were supposed to do.  In a majority of those cases, the client had either activated the Symantec Internet Securities trial (that you will find loaded on most new pc’s) or had gone out for security software for their pc (without talking to me 1st), and bought a Symantec / Norton product because they didn’t know any better. Symantec / Norton software products are notorious for slowing down systems, causing systems to crash, blocking programs and functions that you actually want to use (from my experiences over the years including the 2009 version of their software).

     The majority of unstable system issues on systems with either a Symantec or Norton product installed are fixed by uninstalling the Symantec or Norton products.  Sometimes, even after the initial uninstall is done (by just selecting add/remove programs and uninstall in windows) the issues continue, this is as a result of the Symantec or Norton product leaving enough behind in your system where your system will still try to use it. Reports of their products not properly uninstalling became so common that Symantec has created a “Norton Removal Tool”, to actually properly remove their software. The removal tool actually goes thru a system and checks all locations on the hard drive and registry where any Symantec or Norton product would install and removes all traces of all Symantec/Norton products (That does mean that if you want to remove Symantec Anti-virus and you also have Symantec PCAnywhere installed and you run this tool that both Anti-virus and PCAnywhere will be removed).  Once you remove all Symantec software and reboot you will be able to tell if Symantec / Norton was the culprit or if its something else. Over 90% of the time you will see that your pc is “magically” working as you expect again.

The Symantec Norton Removal tool can be downloaded at http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039 (http://service1 NULL.symantec NULL.com/Support/tsgeninfo NULL.nsf/docid/2005033108162039) . On the download screen you will be asked which product you known, if your not sure of version just open your product and select help and about to see what version you have.

**Before you run the removal tool, make sure that you have the software (CD or Download file) for any Symantec product that you plan to reinstall. Even if all you wanted to remove was Norton Internet Securities, by running this tool Symantec PCAnywhere or Backup Exec or ACT! (or any other program in the Symantec or Norton line) will be uninstalled. Also, if you use ACT! or WinFAX, back up those databases before you do anything else.  I DON’T want to get messages that you lost everything and you didn’t know that it was all going to be removed.  I’m telling you now this removal tool works great but takes all installed Symantec / Norton products and removes them at the same time.