So I’ll start off by saying I am in no way a professional when it comes to tech help, nor do I work for an IT company so please forgive any lackluster tech definitions.
My parents recently had dinner with a senior couple in the neighborhood who own a small business in town. They explained over the course of dinner and conversation that a few of their computers at work and home were ‘infected’ somehow and they were trying desperately to get them fixed because of the sensitive information on the machines. My parents say something to the extent of, “Hey, our son is a nerd- maybe he can help you?”.
The next day I find myself going to their place of business and looking at a computer there. The wife meets me at the office and shows me the infected computer. It looks sketchy and seems to have some bad juju on it but after a quick run of Malwarebytes and Combofix is back up and running fine.
Then, she decided if I can magically fix that one machine I should be able to fix the ones at her house. I follow her back to their house and take a look at two more ‘infected’ computers. They both exhibit the same problem as the other; connected to the internet but can’t browse. I go and look at the internet connection status and see that the machines are both sending and receiving packets so at least I know they’re getting something. After almost 30 minutes of messing with internet connection settings I come to the conclusion that nothing is wrong there since both computers are getting the signal (and both wireless) so I start to look at programs that may be blocking internet access. Ah, looks like Norton 360 is installed on both machines… Double click on Norton 360, nothing happens. Try to uninstall Norton 360, nothing happens. I restart both machines and go into Safe Mode with Networking and voila, now I can browse the internet. Go to uninstall Norton 360 but still- nothing. After another frustrating 30 minutes or so I give up and Google for the answer. Turns out you have to download and install Norton Removal Tool to uninstall Norton 360 from your computer. After all that, both of her machines booted up normally and could browse the internet.
I couldn’t help thinking though that if someone didn’t know how to boot into safe mode, how would they be able to download the removal tool if Norton 360 was blocking internet browsing???
tl;dr- Norton 360 is a pain in the ass to uninstall.
Yeah, that’s how it is.
We once had a customer buy a Toshiba Satellite laptop through us, and as is policy, we had to remove all the crapware before we gave it to the customer. Well, it had Norton 360 installed. When you go to remove Norton 360, it says something like, “Unable to uninstall Norton 360. Symantec Updater must be removed first.”
Okay. Time to remove Symantec Updater.
“Unable to uninstall Symantec Updater. This product is required by Norton 360.”
Wait a minute…
3 times I have my told Mom not to install Norton360, and 3 times now I have had to uninstall Norton360 because her computer will simply not function with it. My tech support phone call with her usually begins with did you install Norton again? (She bought the disc and doesn’t want to believe its the problem)
PSA: Eset provides removal tools that will save you hours.
I have used dozens of those tools and it takes about 5 minutes to remove Norton (or anything else on that list). I almost always install Eset right after I remove whatever crap AV the client has.
Revo Uninstaller, it’s akin to taking a flame thrower to the program and making sure it dies.
Worth the money for the pro considering how nice the free edition is!
I bought a Toshiba Satellite a few months ago, let it go through its 30 day trial of Norton before I attempted to remove it. I thought I had removed it, but there are still traces of it that I cannot remove for the life of me. To top it off, the computer still thinks Norton is installed, so when I tried to use Windows Defender (W8), it wouldn’t even open because it said that Norton was already enable.
I installed Avast, and it seems to be working fine now.
Norton Removal Tool is the best product Symantec ever made.
You went the dirty way.
Proper way to remove Norton is formating the HDD and reinstalling windows.
Best way is DBAN.
Oh man, I experienced this issue almost each and every waking day that I footed the “higher tier” calls for one of America’s most-hated ISPs. They offered a free install of Norton for customers, and it was notorious for breaking the ability for the customer to navigate the Internet.
So what did they need to do? Well, first they needed to pay us about $50-100. Then we would boot into Safe Mode with Networking, which would allow us to remotely connect since Norton’s junk didn’t load there. Then we would run the Norton Removal Tool, reboot the computer, reinstall Norton, and cross our fingers and hope it didn’t happen again.
Really annoying issue, and extremely common as of earlier this year.
Huh. When I uninstalled it (don’t judge me, my dad had payed for a license key and I didn’t know better) to switch to MSE, I just clicked Uninstall in the programs list and it removed it.
I used to work at an IT shop, besides ransomware 80% of “viruses” and slowdowns were caused by McAfee or Norton… sometimes both at the same time.
“If you hate Symantec and you know it clap your hands! * clap clap* If you hate Symantec and you know it and you really wanna show it, if you hate Symantec and you know it clap your hands! clap clap”
I remember a time a couple of weeks ago where I had to uninstall Norton from a laptop, but I couldn’t get the Norton Removal Tool download from the stock copy of IE9 because every time I tried to download the file it would crash IE. >_<
It was easily fixed by installing Chrome, but come on.
I used to work for Symantec. I did it all sales, tech and other stuff. All I have yo say is Norton 360 when it first came out was horrible. I mean I would rather have 6 anti virus or anti spam/ adaware running at once.
A nice hint for you guys trying to uninstall Norton anything and it doesn’t want to uninstall. From Norton’s page just search Norton removal tool. (use at own risk). It has been a few years since I have used the tool but it is made by sym and as a tech agent we used it on all most every call. Like I said use at own risk.
update
When uninstalling anything Norton before the removal tool and ur not getting internet connections safe mode no network. Uninstall than safe mode with network and try to connect. If it doesn’t work install removal tool from a comp that had it and save it to a thumb drive.
I’ve seen McAfee do this too.
Most AV have a special removal tool. Always uninstall with that.
What I don’t understand is, Symantec produces the Norton Removal Tool. It isn’t a third-party app. Why don’t they just have the uninstaller do what the removal tool does?
My uncle’s laptop used to have Norton 360 on it, and it had the same problem as well. It’s stupid, really: the one thing you would probably want functioning with your program doesn’t function correctly (or at all).
Make sure they cancel their subscription to norton because if they don’t norton will continue to renew their subscription and there is no getting a refund after that.
Norton is straight up malware in my eyes. More resilient too.
Ain’t the title the fucking truth!