Not pleased with Trend Micro, suggestions please

The user ratings on CNET are not just for the current version. It is also quite clear, some reviewers have not used the product they are reviewing.

Here are happy customers Edit: (even some reviewers here have not used it).

 

Sorry, I guess I forgot you had posted that, much obliged for the restatement, and good to hear. Still a bit leary though in terms of going with Symantec. Maybe that will change,,,,may even trial the program based on your comment (anyone else care to comment on the current state of Symantec products and support?

 

Well, I am almost convinced, will def give this one a trial. Thank you.

 

I can recommend Norton Internet Security 2011 to you. Anyone bashing NIS these days probably hasn't tried the latest versions. Symantec has much improved the product, and it's worth trying. As far as support, I've used chat support from the GUI and it was satisfactory. I haven't had many problems, but the last time I did, I uninstalled/reinstalled which fixed the problem without bothering with support. Years ago doing that would have taken over an hour, with multiple restarts, but these days it takes only a few minutes to install. I'd recommend downloading the trial version and trying it for yourself.

 

I fully intend to do that. Thanks for your input.

 

bgoodman4 from memory I know you use RollbackRx and imaging software regularly which means that having a real time AV security suite isn't really necessary as you can always rollback or restore an image when things don't look too good.

Brocke's advice about Sandboxie is quite appropriate as you only need to have an "on demand" scanner to check your downloads, Sandboxie will protect your internet browsing sessions. Sandboxie is a one off purchase and then you can choose free scanners (MSE, Avast, Avira,). I also think that Security suites, no matter how powerful your computer is, may have a definite impact in terms of overall performance.

 

So has Sandboxie.

(And free antiviruses, since most of them can't be stripped down to on-demand only.)

 

I'm not going to argue, but on my fast notebook sandboxie is hardly noticeable, and recently I have downgraded my Avira premium from active to on demand with a remarkable increase in speed. As usual one should do some tests on a specific machine.

 

WEll, I have decided to try Norton Internet Security 2011 and I must say that so far I am very UNIMPRESSED. I had a devil of a time getting the sucker to install. Finally, after 3 tries over about an hour and a half I threw in the towel and contacted tech support and let them have a go at it. Finally, 2 techs and an hour later, got it up and running.

I have a question for those who have recommended this suite.

Will the normal weekly scan actually only work when the PC is idle? I have been running a first, comprehensive scan and there is def is a significant impact on system performance. The PC is barely crawling. I decided to pause the scan and immediately performance was back to normal. I then went to minimize the paused program and a note popped up to inform me that normally running minimized would run the scan at a reduced priority (nice to know after an hour of frustration) and did I want to run it at reduced priority or not. I selected to continue running but at a reduced priority and continued to work. Def better but still a slowdown, and I am being generous in my use of slowdown. If this is what I have to look forward to I will pass and look elsewhere. Hell, I am just about ready to go back to Trend Micro at this point. So does the weekly scan only run when the PC is idle or not?

Another irritant is the NIS tool-bar in IE. Is there any way to get it to stay hidden. As far as I can tell at this point I have to re-hide it for every web-page I visit. This is more than an inconvenience as I have a rather involved macro that I run nightly to update a spreadsheet (Lotus 123) and the presence of the tool-bar has rendered the macro useless.

The only way I was able to get around the problem was to uninstall RoboForm (which also feels thats its essential that it be present for every page I load regardless if I have it set to never show in the options). I thought,,,no biggie, NIS has a password and auto log-in feature. No idea how to get it to work though. On one page it asked me if I wanted to store the id and password and it never showed up again for any other pages. In addition, when I went back to the page it had asked about it would put my id into the appropriate field but I still had to manually enter the password. Booo, not good to say the least.

There were other less serious annoyances, like not being able to set a scan schedule etc but these I could live with, at least so far, I fear outher surprises are around the corner.

I really am about ready to ask for a refund but thought I would wait to see what you supporters had to say. I have been at this for the last 7 hours and it is now 5 am. I am tiered, def not happy, and am finally heading for bed.

I look forward to your replies.

 

I suggest you give ESET Smart Security a try soon.

 

You are correct, I do use RB but as far as SandBoxie is concerned I had tried it and was not happy with the program. Cannot remember exactly why but after a few weeks of trying to use it I gave up. Besides, I would rather prevent than repair if possible,,,,, and then there are those little nasties that you never know are there.

I must say that NIS has (so far) found all kinds of tracking cookies and one file it deemed high risk (a PlayClaw file which I restored). But at this point I fear/find NIS has too heavy an impact on my system performance (as well as other annoyances) for it to be suitable for my lap-top (which is my principle use PC).

A decision as to whether to keep it (NIS) and try to work things out or to look elsewhere will be made later today. Right now my past experience of Norton products combined with my current experience has me expecting that something else besides NIS will be the way for me to go.

Thanks for the suggestion though, much appreciated.

 

I suspect that I will be doing that very soon. But first to sleep.

 

ESET Smart Security doesn't come installed with weekly scheduled scan. However by following this knowledgebase tip it is really easy to configure : http://kb.eset.com/esetkb/index?pag...earch&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1302859723404

 

Thank you for this information.

Just booted system and boot is slower than it was previously. Given this and my previous issues, and since there has been no response from NIS supporters I will go with the feeling expressed above and uninstall NIS now. Hopefully I will get a refund from Symantec.

 

What kind of refund? For calling support or something?

 

No, I had, based on the reviews with almost across the board high ratings, decided to "just go with it" and I bought a 2 year licence. I have received the refund and have uninstalled the program (I love RollBack Rx, a simple reboot and Norton was GONE). This of course goes to show that reviews are only rough guides and should be taken with a grain of salt.

I am about to trial ESET but was wondering if someone could recommend a website protection/rating program/service. ESET does not have one of these and I would like to know if a site is considered iffy before I go to that page. This was one of the features that I liked about Trend Micro.

Also, I now remember what it was about SandBoxie that I did not like. I do a lot of CAD and Graphics work on my PC so I try to keep the running services to a min. SandBoxie wanted to have its service running all the time not just on demand so I was busy turning it on and off on a far too regular basis. At some point I would like to get into virtualization and that would solve this (and other potential) problems. Mind you it may create new ones but thats for some time in the future before I get a new PC. I have a large spread sheet in Lotus 123 and I will need to be able to run XP on any new PC I get in the future and a Virtual PC would take care of this for me nicely (I think) so V will play a part in my future for sure.

 

I'm surprised with the difficulties you had with NIS. Did you do a complete uninstall of Trend and then run Trend's removal tool to make sure it was completely removed prior to installing NIS?

 

One thing that's for certain, when you install full blown security suites on a machine that hasn't be reformatted in a long time and has had many installations of other security products, it only leaves room for errors and glitches. Hopefully you rolled your machine back to a clean state before installing Norton 360 or else I fear that's where your problem lies.

I reformatted my PC earlier in the week and installed Norton 360. The program has been running very clean and efficient. Norton Identity Safe integrates with Firefox 4 cleanly and you can simply disable the toolbar without disabling the protection in the browser. I fee like Norton has an edge in protection from other competitors due to its reputation based scanning which is highly effective at red-flagging unknowns and fake antivirus software. Sorry it didn't work out for you, and I hope ESET is what you're looking for. I've tested ESET in the past and i've always enjoyed the product.

 

Yes, and the first tech did so again before he was cut off from taking over my PC and unable to reconnect. I was frustrated but impressed with the efforts of the support staff (a big change from my previous experience (although I did pay $13.95 for 24/7 support) and was happy when the program was finally installed. Then the real fun began.

Proves that you cannot please all of the people all of the time. Every program has folks that run into issues with it, I clearly am one of the ones that NIS did not work for.

 

I was using (and always use), IE for my macro driven data update, my regular Browser is Opera. In IE there was no way to permanently turn the tool-bar off, I know, I spent a lot of time trying to do that,,,a lot of time in part because the system was so danged slow due to the scan.

I too hope ESET works for me or I may wind up back with Trend Micro.

By the way, NIS found 108 tracking cookies,,,,at least some of which I know were no problem (yahoo, etc) and 2 heuristic viruses both of which were safe files from programs I had bought and paid for,,,,PLayClaw a video screen capture program, and InPaint. Not sure what that says about my browsing habits and/or Trend Micro but there it is.

No suggestions for a bad website blocker? I really would like to have one running when I am searching the net which I do a lot of.

 

Bgoodman4, I'm sorry you had so much trouble with NIS 2011. I have to agree with InfinityAz and drkoopz that maybe something left on your computer from another installation was causing a conflict with NIS. I've installed NIS 2011 on several machines and every installation was flawless, taking no more than a couple of minutes. I've experienced none of the problems you described, and hate to hear you had so much trouble after I recommended it to you.

 

I was using (and always use), IE for my macro driven data update, my regular Browser is Opera. In IE there was no way to permanently turn the tool-bar off, I know, I spent a lot of time trying to do that,,,a lot of time in part because the system was so danged slow due to the scan.

I too hope ESET works for me or I may wind up back with Trend Micro.

By the way, NIS found 108 tracking cookies,,,,at least some of which I know were no problem (yahoo, etc) and 2 heuristic viruses both of which were safe files from programs I had bought and paid for,,,,PLayClaw a video screen capture program, and InPaint. Not sure what that says about my browsing habits and/or Trend Micro but there it is.

No suggestions for a bad website blocker? I really would like to have one running when I am searching the net which I do a lot of.

PS edit: just noticed the thread at https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=279757 this will no doubt do the trick. By the way, whats a HIPS program?

 

I guess there is no way to 'turn off' the toolbar but you can simply hide it from showing up in the browser. Simply right click anywhere near the address bar in IE and uncheck 'Norton toolbar' and agree to disable it. It should hide Norton from displaying a toolbar but still provide the web protection.

In terms of a 'bad website blocker' my suggestion might actually be a little unorthodox. A lot of Wilders members will probably talk about DNS services and or linkscanner/wot. But one product i've found to actually do a really good job of blocking malware websites has been K9 web filter. There's a free version you can download and it's primary purpose to filter inappropriate content to children, however i've found you can filter specifically spyware and it does a grade A excellent job of filtering malware sources. It's the same engine Bluecoat uses with its corporate customers.

 

Too late to try that (think I did try that but maybe not) as Norton is gone. Thanks for the suggestion of K9, will be looking at these things once I settle on a suite.

 

I have installed ESET and it looks very nice although I am a bit disoriented by the minimalist interface. I will get used to that I am sure. I have updated the virus definitions and have started a complete scan. In the log window there is an item (the first one) as follows

C:\pagefile.sys - error opening

Any idea whats going on?