Member Avatar for Saddlefall

I want to ask you pros about a performance issue. Ever since I decided to get norton antivirus, my system has been alot slower. I had to format a while back, since it was a while since I had done that. I decided to install norton antivirus 2004 after I had formatted. I immediately noticed a significant slowdown on my system, everything was and is moving slower. I know that it is a heavy program, and that the auto protect runs in the background all the time, checking everything I download, making my system hang for several seconds at a time. I know I can disable it, but the whats the point? Do I really have to have a slow system to be protected against viruses? Or is there some tweaks I can do to make it faster? I have just tweaked XP a little, and It is now running better, but norton is still slowing it down alot. I am thinking about getting more ram, an additional 512MB. Do you think that could improve things?
It is tolerable, but I use heavy adobe programs, and lots of stuff all at once, so I would really like of there were anything I could do to speed things up.

Thanks in advance for any answers you might have :mrgreen:

This is my system:
Athlon 1.8Ghz
512MB ram
XP pro SP2

  • 3 Contributors
  • 4 Replies
  • 127 Views
  • 1 Day Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Saddlefall

Dani AI

Generated

Below are focused, practical diagnostics and low-risk tweaks that complement the suggestions from , and . The aim is to determine whether the security suite is the real bottleneck and to reduce on-access scanning impact without removing protection entirely.

First, narrow the cause. Use Task Manager or Sysinternals Process Explorer to watch CPU and disk I/O while the slowdowns happen. Look for the Norton hosting process (often shown as ccSvcHst.exe or similar) and check which process is driving most I/O. Process Explorer shows per-process I/O and thread activity and makes it easy to correlate spikes with specific files or folders (Process Explorer).

If Norton is responsible, apply these safe mitigations: exclude large working folders and scratch/temp locations used by heavy applications; schedule full scans for nights or truly idle periods; reduce archive/deep scanning during interactive work; and avoid running more than one on-access scanner at the same time. Keep the security product fully patched and use the vendor’s removal tool when switching suites to prevent leftover drivers from causing problems.

Parallel checks that often help: confirm motherboard/chipset and storage drivers are the correct vendor versions (generic drivers can inflate I/O latency), defragment the drive if it’s a spinning disk, and ensure the filesystem isn’t corrupted. Adding more RAM reduces paging and is a reliable way to lower disk activity under multitasking loads.

If acceptable performance can’t be achieved after tuning, try a current trial of an alternate, well-reviewed antivirus (uninstalling the old product cleanly first). Balance is key: targeted exclusions plus scheduled scans usually preserve protection while keeping the system responsive.

Recommended Answers

All 4 Replies

Member Avatar for dlh6213

The additional RAM should surely help; I have Norton also, but have recently found recommendations for System Mechanic (www.iolo.com), which I am planning on trying. But it doesn't have an antivirus program with it. I believe there are good, free AV programs available (TrendMicro?).

Hope this helps a bit; you'll probably get more recommendations shortly.

Member Avatar for Catweazle

Any other Norton products running as well? They are notorious for being the most system hungry products of their type, and I definitely do not recommend their use.

Sure you installed all drivers when you formatted and reinstalled Windows. If your system is trying to operate using generic Windows drivers for the motherboard and other components, that could cause slow operation as well.

Member Avatar for Saddlefall

Thanks for the replies. I will order more RAM shortly, so hopefully that will help abit. I have no other Norton programs running. Perhaps I will try some other programs. Again, thanks for the replies ;)

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.