Getting rid of Norton

Question

Level 1

9 points

Getting rid of Norton

Hi

I decided to remove Norton from my system, I used their removal tool, but buy chance I noticed ( While looking for something else - there are hundreds of crash reports for Norton

com.symantec/mes.systemextension Library not loaded

If I delete the reports , they just re appear within seconds !

so I contacted apple support and they told me where the file is

Library/preferences/Systemextensions

and there it is

They asked me to delete it, but I don't have permissions

I have done "get info" - tried to add a user to read/write and I get You don't have permissions

I am the administrator and I get the same

Iv'e tried it in recovery mode. safe mode and I get the same

Is it because is part of the OS ? will I ever have permissions ?

Any help will be most appreciated as its driving me nuts and maybe hiding other issues I may need to getting

My system is

Mac Studio

64 GB

Apple M1 Max

Sequoia 15.3.1

Many thanks

Ray

Mac Studio, macOS 15.3

Posted on Feb 25, 2025 12:20 PM

Reply

Answer 1

remixray Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 26, 2025 6:14 AM in response to lkrupp

It was a joint effort between Chat GPT and my husband !

I did have permission - but the warning was misleading

Its would have been more helpful if it had said " You can't delete it as its running " !

so, I started in Recovery mode

using Terminal - the Mac was put in unstable mode

then the service was stopped

I rebooted mac

Delete the Extension - no issues

Re booted in recover mode

Put the Mac back into Stabe mode

Rebooted

and no more crashes !

Apple support chat did try to help but they did not really know why

Hope the information helps

Advice - Never install Norton !

Reply

Answer 2

Feb 26, 2025 6:30 AM in response to remixray

When something is still an active part of MacOS, you can not directly delete it, because your Mac would crash when the missing item was referenced.

But you CAN move that item to the Trash (which just sets the 'In the Trash' bit and adds it to the Trash List) where it continues to work (for now). You still can not completely empty Trash -- YET.

When you Restart your Mac, any items marked 'In the Trash' can NOT be incorporated into your new instance of MacOS. so they are not used. Then the Trash CAN be emptied (after that Restart).

Reply

Answer 3

lkrupp

Level 6

18,263 points

Feb 26, 2025 7:57 AM in response to remixray

"Advice - Never install Norton !"

Which is the exact advice we volunteers have been giving users here for over ten years now. You do not need any kind of anti-virus software on a Mac. The anti-virus vendors spread half truths about Apple’s security efforts. Anti-virus software almost always slows a Mac down, reports false positives, causes all sorts of issues. And they mostly find stuff that only affects Windows users.