windows 8 and nortons

damon5

Hi just purchased a new laptop running windows 8 and installed Norton internet security that I had purchased a week earlier and having some problems.Nortons will not do a full scan or quick scan but other scans,reputation scans etc are fine,checked for nortons updates yesterday and downloaded a patch and all was ok after but today its back to square one.Also notice when I,m on my yahoo email page that when I put the hand curser over spam and sent a box comes up with the word compose instead,i,m wondering are these issues to do with the windows 8 operating system,thanks...

p.s also during when I started setting up the laptop it ran a windows update with 60 updates and took around 12 hours to complete

Overheal

update duration will depend heavily on your internet connection. On average I can get a machine through initial updates in just over an hour. Other factors depend on the system performance. A cheap AMD E-1 series laptop is going to apply updates much slower (2-3+ hours) than an i7-4xxx with an SSD (1 hour). My internet speeds are typically 10-15Mbps both at home and where I work, but varies more wildly at work depending on load and time of day.

When you installed Norton, did you uninstall any trial software that may have already been on the computer? Machines regularly come 'bloated' with things like Norton Anti-Theft, Norton Anti-Virus/Internet Security, McAfee Internet Security, Kaspersky Internet Security, etc. etc.

Anti-Virus programs really don't function one atop the other. Highlander rules apply: there can only be One. If two are running, it can make any machine really rather slow, non-responsive, or cause any of a couple other issues. That could compound why your updates took so long.

You can also contact Norton's technical support team. Back when I used Norton I actually found that their support services were one of the better aspects of having Norton.

damon5

Thanks for the reply,regarding the system performance here is a link to the one I bought and the specs,and it did come with a free month of McAfee protection but I uninstalled that before loading nortons
.Regarding nortons not able to do a quick or full scan I found that if I reboot the llaptop and try again its ok
http://www.toshiba.co.uk/laptops/satellite/c850d/satellite-c850d-11f/

p.s upc internet speed is 50 MB that I have,cheers...

Overheal

The E-series processor is one marketed at the "race to the bottom" - tailoring to buyers seeking functional hardware at the lowest cost feasible. They are a false economy: very often spending a little more money will yield a machine that has twice the performance of these.

Add to that this machine only has 2GB of RAM, I'd say you should strongly pursue your options for a return or exchange.

Torqay

Indeed... get rid of this abomination ASAP.

If you intend to keep it, do yourself a favour and ditch Windows in favour of some lightweight Linux distro designed for netbooks (because that is what you got there, albeit with a bigger display).

Overheal wrote: »

very often spending a little more money will yield a machine that has twice the performance of these.

Or even less money...

I've just seen a Fujitsu Lifebook at HN for €259 with an Ivy Bridge Celeron 1000M. That processor is at least twice as fast, comparable to a first generation Core i3.

I had such a new Celeron laptop here the other a day (yet another case of "I hate Windows 8") and was quite impressed with the performance.

testicle

Windows 8 already has AV built in.

Torqay

testicle wrote: »

Windows 8 already has AV built in.

Windows Defender (though disabled by default in Windows 8 OEM with preinstalled trial AV) is probably the way to go with such an underperformer.

GarIT

testicle wrote: »

Windows 8 already has AV built in.

Which when tested was found to to able to detect less than 20% of malware.

Torqay

GarIT wrote: »

Which when tested was found to to able to detect less than 20% of malware.

Surely you mean 97%...

Still not a ringing endorsement but look at rubbish system we're dealing with here. With a CPUMark score of 700 and 2 GB RAM you want to think twice before installing some full-fledged security suite (or Windows 8 64-bit for that matter)

GarIT

Torqay wrote: »

Surely you mean 97%...

Still not a ringing endorsement but look at rubbish system we're dealing with here. With a CPUMark score of 700 and 2 GB RAM you want to think twice before installing some full-fledged security suite (or Windows 8 64-bit for that matter)

I've seen a zero day test actually being done and it detected 20 out of 100 zero day samples. And then less on older malware. Something like 210 of 1100 samples.

That test seems a bit easy too, never seen anything score more than low 90%s on a zero day test.

Torqay

GarIT wrote: »

I've seen a zero day test

Have you ever seen a laptop with an AMD Fusion processor? Painful...

GarIT

Torqay wrote: »

Have you ever seen a laptop with an AMD Fusion processor? Painful...

Yeah, we get a few people in saying things like I got this laptop and its really slow and ask us what's wrong. They usually looked shocked when you tell them there's nothing wrong it's just the laptop and then argue back with x told me this was a good laptop.

damon5

Thanks for replies lads,ok the laptops going back so would like to wipe out any personal stuff from it like photos,video,passwords etc so what is the way to go about this.
p,s Ive 2 weeks left under the 28 day return policy :eek:

Torqay

Backup your personal files. Use the factory recovery facilty to restore the laptop to the state it was in when you unboxed it. Then run portable Ccleaner from a USB stick. Under Advanced Settings you'll find the option "Wipe Free Space". This should take care of it and shred any residue beyond easy recovery.

If you want to do a "proper" job, run DBAN from a bootable CD. Be warned, this will nuke the entire drive and you may not want to return the laptop in an unusable condition.

Capt'n Midnight

Torqay wrote: »

Backup your personal files. Use the factory recovery facilty to restore the laptop to the state it was in when you unboxed it. Then run portable Ccleaner from a USB stick. Under Advanced Settings you'll find the option "Wipe Free Space". This should take care of it and shred any residue beyond easy recovery.

If you want to do a "proper" job, run DBAN from a bootable CD. Be warned, this will nuke the entire drive and you may not want to return the laptop in an unusable condition.

if you have to ask then it's a given that if you run dban then you won't be able restore the factory settings.

sysinternals sdelete will also wipe free space too

Overheal

Torqay wrote: »

Or even less money...

Right now, thats true even over here. AMD is being hurt from not matching Haswell with its own release wave. It announced a new "R-series", but I haven't seen any. They do however still hold the clock record, now with a stock 5ghz 8-core CPU, FX-9590

damon5

Thanks for all the help lads and the heads up to get rid of ASAP,recieved full refund so now ive just to figure out which one to buy on a budget and not end up getting something similar ....

damon5

Was looking at these two Fujitsu Lifebook AH512 Laptop 299 euro saving 70 euro in a sale price or for a few bob more the Fujitsu Lifebook AH532 Laptop | 4GB RAM at 449 euro The first has an intel celeron and only 2GB so assuming maybe not much differant from the toshiba i returned and was thinking more of the i3 processor and 1GB graphic card in the secong one,any thoughts..

Torqay

damon5 wrote: »

Was looking at these two Fujitsu Lifebook AH512 Laptop 299 euro saving 70 euro in a sale price or for a few bob more the Fujitsu Lifebook AH532 Laptop | 4GB RAM at 449 euro The first has an intel celeron and only 2GB so assuming maybe not much differant from the toshiba i returned and was thinking more of the i3 processor and 1GB graphic card in the secong one,any thoughts..

A dedicated graphics card would not be necessary (unless you want to play demanding games), on-chip Intel HD graphics are more than capable for the usual tasks, cheap entry level dedicated GPUs are not that much better. Anything less than a GT 640M is not worth paying for.

As for the Fujitsu, it used to be €259 last week at HN. Not a bad deal. You'll just have to some more memory (4 GB RAM = €35). Certainly a big step up from that AMD processor. But if you can stretch the budget somewhat, get a Core i3 laptop, available online for ~€370 these days.

damon5

Thanks Torqay for your advice,will look around a bit more so for something suitable around the 400 mark.Are the asus laptops similar to the Acer,had an acer before and was a nightmare,2 returns and eventually a whole motherboard replacement.That progressed to only being able to run the damn thing without shutting down and getting really hot by having either a hair dryer on cold or a hoover aimed at the vents,could fry an egg on it .....

Torqay

ASUS has a better reputation and track record than Acer regarding reliability, though their service leaves something to be desired.

damon5

okay thanks....