please help a newbie!

Ok, so I’ll admit that I’m not very knowledgeable with this antivirus stuff. I had used Norton ever since a few months ago when my subscription ran out yet again. I was going to renew it but then found out about avast. I was happy to find out there there is FREE antivirus protection out there!

I dowloaded v.4.7 about a month ago. I didn’t really notice anything at first, but in the past week or so, getting anywhere online had been taking SOOOOO long. Some websites I go to took several minutes to load, and sometimes they never loaded and I got an error page. I tried pausing the Web Shield today, and it fixed everything! I mean, now I’m back to the fast internet I’m used to. So…why is this? Should I keep the Web Shield off? Or is that risky? If it is dangerous, then how can I stay safe AND fast? Please help! Oh, some info…I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop - it’s a little over 2 years old. I have Windows XP. I’m not sure what else you’d need to know to help…let me know. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this :slight_smile:

Norton leaves a lot of files & registry keys behind when it is uninstalled that can conflict with avast & other av’s. Run the Norton Removal Tool to get rid of the leftovers. Reboot.

It might be a good idea to uninstall avast. Reboot. Run the avast! uninstall utility. Reboot. Reinstall avast. This way you can be sure to get a clean install of avast.

Welcome to the forum. :slight_smile:

Wow, thank you so much for the fast response! I will definitely try your recommendations tomorrow and I’ll let you know what happens. Thanks again!

Yay! rdmaloyjr, I followed your directions and everything is running quickly and smoothly now. Thank you SO MUCH!

You’re welcome. :slight_smile: