I recently had to deal with a customer’s machine who had a Norton product installed on it which simply would not allow us to install a piece of software. After much troubleshooting and unsuccessfully trying to disable the Norton protection, we simply decided to uninstall it in order to get the installation done.
Unfortunately, going to Add/Remove programs in Windows didn’t do the trick, so after some quick searching I found the Norton Removal Tool. After downloading and running this, Norton seemingly was removed from the system and allowed us to install the software.
I don’t personally use Norton, so I don’t want to speak ill of it, but I do find it very ironic that this tool is distributed in the exact same manner as their malware removal tools.
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Just a comment regarding the Norton’s removal issue. For several years I used Norton’s System Works, finally I felt it was just too big for my system, so I decided to remove it and go with AVG for my anti-virus. After removing the program with the regular uninstall (it seemed to remove all), I noticed one file in my root directory called NTDETECT. Could not remove it for anything. This file was 9 gigs in size. The file is used to store the ‘protected deleated’ files with their Norton’s Wastebasket. Had to go on the internet to find a solution to remove it (sorry can’t remember exactly but it IS there). Still can’t remove the file completely, but I am down to 24k instead of the 9 gigs. When I searched Norton’s, their comment was basically, ‘sorry we can’t help you’. You might want to pass this on to readers who are having a storage problem and can use the extra space.
I don’t know which is more invasive, NAV or AOL! LOL!
Dealt with NAV at work for years, I know NONAV.exe well
I DOUBLED the speed of my previous machine by removing Norton.
I’m hoping the removal tool works on the bundle-ware currently infecting my system.
Since I answered no to the eula agreement I guess I can always reverse engineer their products and publish my results!