Simple question from a simple guy.

[bigjimaz]

My subscription with Norton expires at the beginning of March. I have been hearing so many good things about AVG and am seriously thinking of switching.

My questions are these. Should I download and install the AVG before I delete Norton? Do I need to disable Norton to download AVG?

Considering I'm an administrator on an adult web site and in an adult chat room and I use a yahoo email address there, is AVG enough. I know that I never had a problem with Norton as far as it missing viruses or worms.

I'm sorry, this sounds like something I should know. Help me out please.

[Broomjockey]

AVG can be set up to scan your emails incoming and outgoing if you use a program similar to Outlook (whichever you prefer). If you use yahoo in-browser, it should have its own anti-virus to look after itself.

Now, as for order-of-operations:
1. Download AVG.
2. Unplug computer from network
3. Uninstall Norton.
4. Make damned sure Norton's completely gone.
5. No, really. Check again.
6. Install AVG, set auto-update and scan times.
7. Reconnect to network.

This order means you won't be vulnerable while switching over, and that you won't have them fighting each other when installing/etc.

[lordlundar]

Fully agree with Broomjockey for 2 reasons:

1. It's a bad idea to have 2 anti-virus programs on one computer. They don't get along and while they're trying to remove each other, they're letting real threats in.

2. Norton has a bad habit of leaving parts of itself still on the system which causes no end of issues. Before you uninstall, download their removal program at this address first, or you may lose your connection. No joke, I've seen it happen too many times.

[bigjimaz]

You guys heard of Murphy's Law, right?

It came and bit me not an hour after I wrote my post. I got an auto update from Norton that necessitated a reboot. SoI hit the OK, like I've done a hundred times and when it tried to restart Windows, I got a blue screen with a tech code of 0x00000024. Nothing I knew would get the thing to boot.

Anyway, I called the local tech in my town when they opened at 9 this morning and he won't even look at it unless I divvy up $75.00 up front to diagnose. I was nice about it, but I'm not about to pay that kind of money on the outside chance that he will be able to fix it in the hour of his time that he was asking the money for.

So I called Dell. I got a really nice, heavily accented guy in Bombay whose name was supposedly Jason, who kindly told me that my computer is out of warranty (no kidding, I got it in 2005) and that for $39.00 he would see if he could walk me through a few steps.

Well, long story short, I had to reformat my drive because I do not have a recovery disk. (Dell decided that the Demension 2400's didn't need one) So, a half hour later, I'm back up and running like the computer is brand new, except I lost everything I had stored. At least I had backups of the really important stuff.

The good thing is that I didn't have to worry about making sure that Norton was completely off the computer, the format took care of that. So here I sit with shiny new 2½ year old computer with my new, completely up-to-date AVG running very nicely.

Now all I have to do is get all the stuff I had back.

[lordlundar]

You guys heard of Murphy's Law, right?

Sadly, Murphy and I are on very familiar, though not friendly terms.

Sucks that you had to do a reformat, but at least the loss isn't terribly heavy. It's a good reason why I keep all my non recoverable files on a second HDD.

[bigjimaz]

and that for $39.00 he would see if he could walk me through a few steps.

OK, we go from Mr. Murphy to Mr. Karma.

I told the owner of the site I administrate about the virus, the blue screen and the fee that I got charged for the tech guy to have me hit a few keys.

I got a check in the mail today for $39.00 and it was sent overnight to boot! The site owner said that it was his fault because one of the advertising banners was tampered with from one of his sponsors and that is probably where the virus came from.

Nice guy. If I ever get to Atlanta, there are several beers with his name on them.

[F&R Computer Man]

Should I download and install the AVG before I delete Norton? Do I need to disable Norton to download AVG?

I would uninstall Norton 1st but norton leaves files behind. 2nd you should not have to disable Norton just to download AVG.