New laptop using all internet time

supermouse

Hey guys and gals,

Apologies in advance if this is in the wrong forum. So, the other day I bought myself my first laptop, a Samsung NF210. After the initial ''using your laptop for the first time'' set up, i connected to my internet providor. Yet, i used 50mb in under 5 mins..... i take it something in the background is using my data allowance?

And when i turn off my computer i get a warning screen saying i need to shut down my background windows and systems, yet i havent opened any?

I have norton 360 installed, hopefully its not a virus i have

Sorry for complete naievity in this subjecty!

Any ideas?

SM

demanufactured

Because there is many updates available for windows 7 it will use up a lot of your allowance to download them , also a bit of advice on nortan , it is very rescource heavy and will slow your laptop down over time.

If you want decent pay for anti virus program , kaspersky is probably the best.

Free options (and perfectly good ones) are microsoft security essentials , and avast anti virus.

supermouse

ah thank you very much for the reply! can i stop the windows 7 updating? or do i just have to let it go?

Got the norton free with the comp thats the only reason i used it, but will look into the other ones!

SM

demanufactured

You can stop automatic updates from the control panel , but tbh its not recommended, who is your provider , im assuming your using a usb dongle if you have a monthly allowance?

dave1982

50 mb is nothing,wouldn't worry about it,it was probably windows updating for the first time.Although something to keep a eye in case some else is using wireless, very doubtful but some thing to be aware of.

Trevor451

Norton antivirus may also download updates in the background. in fact nearly all antivrus programs do background updating.

seithon

Norton Antivirus causes more problems then most viruses do, you may wish to switch to something like Eset or AVG (you can google for them) and remove Norton from your system.

5uspect

Definitely get rid of Norton as soon as you can. It's a disgrace that it and McAfee come installed on so many Windows machines.

Microsoft Security Essentials is probably the easiest in install and live with.

The Windows Update Icon looks like this:

And you'll see it down in the system tray where the time and date appears when it's running.

There are usually a lot of updates when you get a new computer, be it Windows, Apple or Linux based. Apple released a 600MB update last week and the upcoming Service Pack for windows 7 is expected to be 1.2GB based on the current beta test release of it.
You should generally lets these updates go ahead as they generally improve the stability and performance of your machine.

Watch out for bogus updates such as website ads pretending of offer free spans or performance boosts. Quick rule of thumb is if the mouse pointer changes from an arrow to a hand:

Then your mouse is over a link to something and not an actual Windows dialog box.

For example:


Move the mouse anywhere over this image and your mouse changes to a hand. The elements of the dialog box don't respond to your mouse pointer by glowing as they should normally.

Overheal

seithon wrote: »

Norton Antivirus causes more problems then most viruses do, you may wish to switch to something like Eset or AVG (you can google for them) and remove Norton from your system.

When you let the subscription expire, yes. Norton in that case will disable itself and drag down your firewall settings along with it. Otherwise nothing wrong with Norton. Except for the fact that you pay for it, and Microsoft Security Essentials is free and just as useful.

What is your download cap exactly? Windows will consume a lot of data in the first month while it grabs the majority of updates. MSE updates every so often but this is marginal. What really digs in is all the facebook and youtube time.

For the internet I strongly reccomend downloading Firefox and using it as your browser (not Internet Explorer) and install the Adblock Plus addon for it, as this will block out both web-ads and the popups that try to trick people into downloading things. On top of that, advertisements are extremely heavy on bandwidth.

supermouse

Ah guys ye're very good!! Norton is now removed, firefox is now installed as is AVG! And, computer is no longer eating allowance. I was on a weekly free allowance with my apartment, not sure how much we were allowed per week but it ran out the same day our allowance was allocated so it was annoying. Much better now.

Thanks so much

SM