Norton Revisited

Thanks anyway I posted this on Neowin's Vista forum and the only thing suggested was to reinstall Vista I don't want to do that now because if I do I will lose Ultimate and go back down to Home Premium (it is a long, sad story ).

MS should come out with some kind of Security Center cleaning tool because you know you are going to run into situations where some programs won't uninstall fully.

 

I don't know if this utility would be of any benefit to you or not; you should investigate and make your own determination.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

 

I don't actually use Firefox myself, I use the Sea Monkey suite, but I have indeed used IE7, and while it maybe an improvement on IE6, I would still recommend Firefox or Sea Monkey over IE any day, the reason(s) being that there have already been several security holes found in IE7, and while the same can be said about Firefox, I don't think there has been a case where any security flaws have been exploited, and Firefox do tend to patch things quicker than M$. As FF is still in the minority, the hackers / virus writers still tend to target IE, which obviously tests and reveals it's vulnerabilities more prevalently.

I also don't like the new layout of IE7, but I guess it's how things are going to look with Vista. The Favorites Center (sic) seems a little fiddly, the Menu bar is in the wrong place (although I found a way to move it), the anti-phishing thing was very annoying, and it doesn't generally seem as fast as SM or Firefox. That said, it's a matter of personal opinion, and perhaps to describe it as 'sh*t' was slightly too derivative.

 

I went there and saw it included Vista so I downloaded and installed it. But I could not find the program anywhere on my menu. I even tried running msiuu.exe directly and it said it could not be found.

I had a thought and logged out and back into my Admin account and there it was in it's menu. I ran it but PCTools FW was not on the list. At the moment SecCenter reports that NIS FW is on so there is no problem there. It just shows up when you click on "view other installed firewalls:

http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/9779/secctrno0.jpg

Since it really isn't affecting anything, it isn't worth losing Ultimate over it.

Thanks anyway, this prog may come in handy in the future

 

When I first got on the web, I used the Mosaic browser (anyone remembers this one?)

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/2892/mosaichh2.gif

As you can see, web browser layouts have not changed much since back then. So it was inevitable in the natural progression of things that someone will "shake things up" with a new layout (Opera has done this to some degree). While I didn't like IE7's layout at first myself, I have gotten used to it now.

I would never had gone to all those cracks and warez sites in IE6, I would have preferred FF with NoScript to do that. But since it was my intention to catch something I went ahead and tried it in IE7 and came away from the experience unscathed (which I didn't want to happen, lol). The Vista version has more protection with it's Protected Mode.

Kind of off topic, I found some interesting info when I was searching for a screenshot of Mosaic I didn't know about:

"Mosaic was released on the Internet in 1993 and became "the" application that caused the Web to explode. Originally developed for Unix, it was ported to Windows and Mac within a few months. Both Andreessen and Bina [Mosaic's developers] later went to work for Mosaic Corporation, which was formed to market Mosaic, but wound up developing the Netscape browser. The company was renamed Netscape, and the Netscape browser reigned supreme for a while.

The University eventually licensed Mosaic to Spyglass, Inc., which Microsoft acquired. Thus, the Mosaic browser ultimately evolved into Internet Explorer."

ref: http://www.answers.com/topic/mosaic-web-browser

 

How often does Symantec release non-Beta definitions now?

 

I have not used it that much to really tell but it has updated at least once a day so far. I just did a LiveUpdate and there was an update to the WhiteList.

Security History does not show when updates are installed but it shows about everything else. I finally got a trojan (Downloader) warning popup last night (I painted over all IP addresses including my MAC address in this pic) :

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/2932/sechistkh4.th.jpg

No big deal really since Symantec says that it effects all Windows versions except Vista.

It also shows some intrusion attempts that were blocked silently

 

Oh, just wanted to mention this. Friday my SysAdmin at work asked me to help him set up a new Dell that he bought for his daughter. It came with Vista Ultimate and since he wasn't familiar with it yet he asked for my help.

I helped him with setting up accounts and such. Then he started uninstalling some of the "bloat" stuff Dell installs. He started to delete NIS '07 (it appears that Dell has switched back to Norton, for a while there they had left Norton for Trend Micro) and I said "Woah!". Then I told him to at least try it because it will surprise him

 

my dell came with mcafee *lol*

im still waiting for dell to ship me my vista midway, its been on order since jan 1st (or maybe it was the end of dec)

 

thanks Chris, for the good advice. well worth it.

 

You can hide the NIS 2007 phishing toolbar if you want to (IE reference). Just right click on the IE upper menu bar and uncheck "Show Norton Toolbar". The Norton phishing toolbar will only surface when a malicous site is detected.

Also be sure to disable IE's phishing tool if you have the NIS 2007 phishing active. Running both will slow down web page openings. Norton's phishing protection is far superior to IE's phishing tool....jmo

 

your welcome trjam,

good luck with it and lets see how long it lasts.

 

Just a note ( from a user who likes 2007 NIS very much).

You can lose the green pfishing bar on IE7 ( without losing the protection) by hitting "Tools" then "Toolbars" then unchecking the Norton bar.

Likewise you can lose the second taskbar icon too ....but I am too lazy right now to tell you exactly where to go to do so (sorry <g>). I know this because a friend actually WANTED that second icon and I found the setting to activate or deactivate it. There are actually a ton of little advanced settings buried in the NIS options, but the default settings are usually fine.
Worth exploring though.

 

I tested NIS2007 but only as a firewall, before the update came out. My observations AS A FIREWALL were:

1. User defined 3rd priority rules ("trojan rules") have been completely removed from the application. As a result, rules with lower priority than application rules can no longer be created, although there is a hard-coded block rule in place.

2. To get to the firewall log took about 7 clicks of the mouse button. NPF 2004 took 2 clicks.

3. Had ccapp not responding at one shutdown.

4. The advanced statistics (ie. firewall rule matches, etc.) that were present in NPF2004 (and removed forever in 2006) are still missing.

Don't know whether the update fixed #3, but the first 2 are "showstoppers" for me. Also, using as a "firewall only" means you need to install the antivirus, which isn't a good thing if you've already got one you're satisfied with. (ie. Kaspersky, which doesn't always like to sleep in the same bed with Symantec).

Noticed that memory use is much lower than older versions, but considering what's missing now from the firewall, it's not a trade I am willing to make. If you like Norton stuff and are a "firewall enthusiast", using Symantec Client Security (corporate stuff) is the only real choice now, not having any of the above limitations.

The above comments don't apply to the antivirus component, which wasn't tested.