Getting rid of Norton Antivirus

noir_blood

Okay, so last year or so, I got a laptop, and of course it came with Norton Antivirus already installed. I know, I know, I should have done a clean wipe and started fresh, but it never really bothered me to much, so I didn't do anything about it.

A month or two ago though, I had to do a system restore on my laptop, and it seems it fucked up something in Norton, because now I'll get a pop up message every so often. The message pops up the most when i'm downloading songs off the zune marketplace, and annoyingly, it'll stop their process until I press ok.

So I want to go about disabling norton. Thing is, I don't see any option to do that. When I go into the program, it just gives me settings. I can't log into the account either because I never created a login, and now the free trial is over.

When I try to just delete it from my computer, it says it can't.

So does anyone have any way to disable/get rid of it that I might be missing?

Rubick

When you go into Add/Remove programs it tells you it can't? That is the primary place you should be able to uninstall from.

Regina Fong

Norton is malware. Removing it is difficult to say the least.

Hahnsoo1

Norton has special "Removal Tools" to remove their products. Not sure if they actually work:
http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039

UncleSporky

Yeah I agree with the malware diagnosis. Probably unintentional malware, but it seriously gets its claws into a computer and doesn't want to let go. Try that removal tool. I didn't look at it but if it's the right thing it may help.

You can't really just do Add/Remove Programs in most cases. Even removing it from startup and deleting its program folders from safe mode won't completely take care of it. Admittedly this is probably because they don't want viruses/malware to be able to casually disable it but in doing so they make their own product nearly as bad.

DHS Odium

Purge it with fire. Norton is the worst computer virus I've ever encountered, and my solution is to reformat the computer. Probably not the hassle you want to go through though.

Evil_Reaver

As Hahnsoo1 said, all the OP needs to do is run the Norton Removal Tool. It'll go through and remove all traces of Norton from the Program Files, Add/Remove Programs, and the registry.

Removal Tool

When you get to the download page, you're going to see a bunch of links for the various products that Symantec offers. The removal tool is the same for all of them, so it doesn't matter which one you click.

Reiten

Uninstalling Norton without using the removal tool is very risky. Use that removal tool.

Thanatos

Well, first you need an old priest and a young priest...

Honestly, you should probably reformat anyway. Removal tool or not, I'd probably reformat to get rid of it.