New HP Laptop with NIS 2008 installed

I just picked up a new HP 15.4" laptop with Vista, a core 2 duo 1.66ghz, 3 gb ram, nvidia 8400m gs video(256 mb dedicated) etc. It is a nice upgrade from my single core amd 1.8 ghz laptop that had 128mb shared video and 896 mb ram. Anyway the new HP came with A trial of Norton Internet Security 2008 and although I have not been a fan of Norton for a while, I have to say that this version is not that bad in comparison to previous ones. I will try it out while the trial lasts, but since I have Multiple ESS license I will likely end up with that installed later. I am glad however that Norton seems to have improved somewhat over many of the versions I have tried in the past particularly from 2001-2006 versions.

The laptop runs pretty decent once I started getting rid of some of the startup junk and toolbars etc. and the cpu now idles at average of 2%, but still I am weeding out some things I don't want installed and haven't gone too in-depth when looking at startup programs yet. I wish they wouldn't load so much junk on the computers to begin with.

Anyway I find NIS 2008 to be an improvement from prior versions.

 

Reformatting using your Windows disk will certainly get rid of all the junk.

 

Yeah but those cheapos don't include a disc, just a partion with image to restore back to factory install. My Dell Desktop came with a disc so I did a clean install on that one.

 

I know what you mean, I had to spend hours cleaning off a new Dell. Fortunately Dell sent me a disk and my newest format is junk-free.

 

Yeah I bought my Dell just when the Vista upgrade discs were coming out so I have both xp and vista on that one.

 

Yes NIS2008 is a big improvement over previous versions.

 

On some of the new systems they have a folder in start menu to create a OS disk. With luck you have that. Or just contact support and request one. They will charge at least for shipping but you may get one that way. Also ask for driver install disk at same time.

 

This is why I don't buy from HP even though their support is superior to Dell's. They don't send disks with the computer even those that are not elcheapo's. I don't want a restore partition either. I want a Reinstallation disk and a resource disk. I think HP will charge and send a RESTORE disk not a Reinstallation disk. That is why I won't buy from them or any OEM except Dell. Why would I want to restore the computer to factory like install with all the garbage? Dell puts no garbage on theirs from Small Business now if you ask and will ship without an AV installed also.

I could not see anywhere at HP's site to state that you want NO AV installed. I would never buy a computer that had Norton installed as you cannot fully remove Norton, not without a reformat, and since HP sends Restore disks instead of Reinstallation disks there is no way to get Norton off completely.

You should run the PCdecrapifier on it.

 

I'll keep all this in mind when I purchase my Vista machine I still think the best thing to do is have one built with Vista OS disk. The rest being blank nothing. Then I go load my own stuff.

As you can see in my sig. my cheapo Emachine came with Norton IS 2007. The 60 day trial is about to expire. I will not purchase. It came with restore disk. I'm looking at the AV-comparitvies over several test dates to see which way I might go just might go back to free McAfee from Comcast. I am drifitng here so I will start a new thread on my questions and considertions later.

I did not know HP gave no disk at all! What's a person to do when machine needs disk at 2 AM.

I don't know if there is much difference between 2008 and 2007, I have heard that these clean up on removal much better then old versions it sounds like what you are saying is this is untrue. Wiggle may just want to do what I am doing run out the trial and move on.

 

That is starting to become an "old wive's tale" about not being able to clean Norton out completely. I have done it successfully several times with the SymNRT and CCleaner combination.

I bought a cheap Acer laptop that also did not come with OS or Recovery disks instead it only has a hidden recovery partition. What I did was an image backup of a clean system with only drivers and SP1 installed using Acer's eRecovery and burned it on two DVDs.

 

Yes there is an option to make a recovery disc which will restore the image back with all the extra junk installed. So far I have been fairly successful at getting rid of a lot of the junk on it that I don't want there. Once I am happy with it I will use Acronis true image to make my own image and use that in case I need to restore an image. That way I can restore to a cleaner version of windows. I too have successfully removed Norton in the past so I think I can do it when the time comes. I have heard of PC decrapifier before, but have yet to use it. I will check it out though. I use ccleaner and revo-uninstaller to help me get rid of stuff.

If you customize a PC from HP.com you can choose to have no AV installed and also for $19 you can get a recovery dvd with genuine windows vista. Whether that will let you install the OS without the extra junk I don't know.

 

Just tried pcdecrapifier and the one thing It found that needed to be rmoved is the wildtangent junk. I knew it was there and needed to go, but haven't gotten to it yet. I hope the decrapifier can get rid of it.

 

Back on topic about Norton 2008

My Vista laptop which I purchased about month ago also came with Norton IS 2008 - it is crap. Norton is still something I'd never buy as a home user . The secret is that your computer is new , dual core , lots of RAM , the new different way Vista handles the start-up entries -> this is why you think it has improved .

I kept that trial for some hours and after it got uninstalled , the computer was even faster than before . NIS 2008 has changes , for sure . But hasn't improved .

It is getting bigger and bigger , it takes so much time to install and uninstall (because it touches in many places - takes control of the OS) . Requires at least 256 Mb RAM , so much hard disk space ... why?!

My old laptop with clean install of XP SP2 (1 Ghz processor , 736 Mb RAM) , NIS 2008 or NAB installed separately - the computer is so slow that you can't even imagine.

I am sure that after you uninstall NIS and install something else , you'll notice the difference !

 

I wish I could get the NIS2008 trial to work on my test machine, but it refuses to do so for some reason. I do, however, own a copy of Norton 360 (bought for AUD30, great bargain!) installed on one of my snapshots on my main PC, and so far I'm quite pleased with it.

With today's machine specs, performance issues on legacy museum-grade computers (like mine ) is more or less irrelevant. Symantec has one of the best scanning engines as far as I'm concerned, as it seems to handle polymorphism and code-jumbling techniques quite well with very low FPs. Unfortunately, they do need to work on their signature databases a bit, as it seems rather sparse at the moment.

I'm tempted to believe that Symantec has got the firm upper hand against McAfee for now in the desktop antivirus product class. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, to be honest.

 

i use dell laptop , toshiba laptop , sony laptop and Hp laptop

the bad and very bad HP i will never buy HP laptop

 

i helped my friend reinstall nis2008
it still has live update which messes up regularly.
it does take ages to install as noticed by hi tech boy.
there are much better antivirus/secuirty suites out there.
there is around 5 suites i would use before even thinking about nis.

 

Well I got rid of wildtangent junk. And after looking over all the symantec running processes and the long list of items in add/remove that symantec installs I decided to uninstall it rather than to wait the 6 months until the trial ends. I used the norton removal tool and it seems to get rid of most stuff. In IE though it left some things in the add-on area. It left symantec intrusion protection, symantec listener control, symantec smartissue, symantec script runner class and some others from symantec. I was not able to select delete on these but was able to at least set them to disable. Also norton left phishing protection disabled b/c it used it's own phishing protection when it was installed I guess. I enabled phishing protection for ie and ff after norton was removed.

I installed ESS and it is working without issue to my knowledge so far. CPU usage is less with ESS as it now is at 0% and 1% while idling and there is not the long list of norton processes running so I am happy. In conclusion I feel Norton feels improved at least, but still it is not my cup of tea and most likely never will be again. It is a bit scary to see how many processes symantec has running and how much it has listed in add/remove.

 

I just got rid of NIS2008 (60-day trial) from my sister's new vaio vista (came without OS disk). Indeed, ditching NIS is the first thing i did in order to remove all unnecessary stuff bundled with it

1. uninstall a program
2. manually remove all symantec folders/files left behind
3. clear temp folder
4. NRT
5. jv16 PT 2008's registry cleaner/software manager
6. last but not least: registry booster 2

..with restarts in between