Apologies if this has already been covered;
My Norton AntiVirus expires in a few weeks and I’m wondering if Avast will be adequate as a replacement.
I also have A-Squared; is it necessary with Avast? Will there be a conflict?
TIA
Why not? There are tons of ex Norton users here.
You’ll feel that your computer won’t be hogged by Norton anymore.
- Remove NAV through Add/Remove programs from Control Panel. Boot.
- Use Norton Removal Tool for Windows 2000/XP/Vista.
- Boot.
- Install avast! Boot.
- See what you get.
They won’t conflict. Do you have the payed version of a-squared?
Thanks for the quick reply.
My computer guy installed A-squared (free edition) without me asking; I guess he thought it was necessary.
Yes, Symantec / Norton seem to take over my computer at times :-\
It’s a good trojan detector. Won’t conflict. Just take care about false positives.
I suggest AVG antispyware instead of a-squared.
Avast should be a suitable replacement for Norton.
No conflict here between Avast and A-Squared.
AVG-As is another good program.SUPERAntiSpyware gets good feedback also.
Many great PC manufacturers have now deals with Windows vista Home Premium and Norton Internet Suite free trial pre-installed. They are also claiming their software are optimized to their PCs (I bought an Acer Aspire Intel Pentium 2 core 1.6 GHz, 1GB RAM, 320 GB, a medium deal, I would say…). So far I.m not impressed and I do recommend you folk to wait and see, prices are falling and technology goes fast. As far as I’m concerned, I think a pre-installed internet security suite trade marked symantec is not to spit upon especially if fitted to the pc. After the trial period and evaluating the money matter of course you have to ask yourself if it’s well worth the $60.00 bucks or so they are asking. But as such no, Symantec is not better than Avast to me. It’s my opinion. And I haven’t yet tried it on Vista as of stability and efficiency… 8)
If you purchase a Dell, you can now order it completely bare of any trial or spam ware.
My new Dell Vostro 1700 Laptop came only with the operating system.
I added all other programs according to my own choice. 
It sure made life easier.
That is very good news.
I’ve dropped the offer immediately, the first thing I’ve done after boot, even before updating Windows… Symantec no, it’s a matter of optimized computer in fact, not in theory.
Dell offering computers without the trial junk?
Now that’s a good move!
Maybe the computer itself is a junk… this is a joke ;D
Hi,
I followed the instructions posted up-thread exactly, and had no problems uninstalling Norton and installing avast! home edition. Thanks for the help.
As far as I can tell, Avast! is doing a good job of giving virus protection, however, when I do a scan, all 907 items show as “Unable to scan”. How do I fix this?
TIA
This looks like the reason for being Unable to scan (always given, you need to expand the column to see all the text) is Archive password protected.
Many programs (usually security based ones) password protect their files for legitimate reasons such as AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy, there are others (and avast doesn’t know the password or have any way of using it even if it did know it).
When you run scans with the above programs and you delete harmful entries that they detect, a copy is kept (in quarantine/restore/backup) in case you need to reverse what you did. These are usually password protected, you should do some housekeeping and delete old backup/recovery/quarantine entries (older than two weeks or so), this will reduce the numbers of files that can’t be scanned.
By examining 1) the reason given by avast! for not being able to scan the files, 2) the location of the files, you can get an idea of what program they relate to. You may need to expand the column headings to see all the text.
Files that can’t be scanned are just that, not an indication they are suspicious/infected, just unable to be scanned.
Though I surprised to see these in the system volume information folder, you should clean up the system volume information folder to give you a clean start point and these particular ones won’t be there.
Create Clean Restore Point - Clear old Restore Points.
Now you are clear of infection create a clean System Restore point:
- Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System tools, System Restore.
- In the pop-up that appears fill in the radio button to Create a Restore Point
- Click NEXT
- Enter a useful name that you will remember if you need to find this again (Clean Restore Point)
- Click CREATE
You now have a clean restore point, you should clear the old ones:
- Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System tools, Disk Clean Up
- Click OK on the C: drive
- Click the More Options tab
- In the System Restore section click the Clean Up button
Thank you. I will try your suggestions and do another scan to see what happens.
I’m not sure I know how to expand the column headings … it shouldn’t be that difficult? Maybe click and drag the border? I will report back.
Your welcome.
Hover the mouse pointer between the column headings until the pointer changes to two arrows, left click (and hold) the mouse button and drag to the right.
Hey ! Thanks again David R 8)
Yes, I finally figured out how to do the expansion.
I cleaned up the System Restore and did other clean up as far as I was able, then ran another scan. I didn’t save a screen shot of the results, but all files were again “Unable to scan” ~ one was for reason of containing some sort of bomb! Three or four were “corrupted” and all the rest were “password protected”.
The learning continues … ???
Enable the report option and you’ll have a report after the scanning.
Many reasons for that: access denied, password protection, archive corruption…
Files that can’t be scanned are just that, not an indication they are suspicious/infected, just unable to be scanned.
Decompression bomb is a file that may be rather small, but decompresses to an enormous amount of data (when processed as a packed archive). Such file are not malicious per se, but they may block an antivirus program when it tries to scan them.
This kind of files is rather hard to detect (and avoid) precisely - so, it is possible that there are some false alarms. It’s not a big problem in this case, however - the “decompression bomb” announcement actually means something like “The file has a very high, maybe even suspicious, compression ratio and the AV is not going to scan the archive content”.
I’d suggest to ignore these files.
But you can change values into avast4.ini file to configure how avast should work with these files.
Click ‘Settings’ in my signature for more info 
avast can’t scan files that are password protected, it doesn’t know the password.
There are many legitimate reasons why a file was password protected. For instance, the ones you’re talking about. Lavasoft stores its data in a password-protected ZIP archives (to prevent other similar tools from messing up with them). It’s really nothing to worry about - it’s normal.
Your welcome
Thank you Tech
You’re welcome. Feel free to come back any time you need help.
Is everything working now?