My Mac Slower After Installing Norton

There are not yet any known Viruses for the Mac systems. Thus you do not require an anti-virus program such as Norton. And, as you have noticed, Norton for Mac places a heavy load on your computer resulting in much slower performance all the time that Norton is operating. I would heartily recommend that you uninstall Norton and reclaim your computer's system resources
(Note: this topic has been covered many times in past Forum inquiries.)

Norton doesn't have a very good record on OS X. There isn't really much of a reason to run any active scanner (the part that is slowing down your machine), but there are a few on demand scanners out there - you might take a look at ClamXav.

It doesn't actively scan, so it is not running all the time. It scans on demand. It would be like running any other app. I have no idea if it will detect 'malicious scripts' though.

You can probably deactivate all of the active scan functions from Norton and just scan the downloads after the fact.

Two things to keep in mind, almost no one here and commenting has used Norton in years and is going by past and rule of thumb, and comments from those that do. Not from first hand knowledge.

Second, have you checked on Norton Community at all?
http://community.norton.com/t5/Norton-for-Mac/bd-p/norton_mac

There is also Kaspersky AV only for Mac, as well as Intego (which does impact performance as well). Even on Windows the only thing that seems to work unobtrusively in the background has been Microsoft Security Essentials which is highly rated.

Norton's software has been steadily eroding in its popularity because other software that functions better has been around:

Anti-Virus - already covered in this thread.

Firewall - Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Sharing has one built-in, and router and WiFi Access point hardware have even better firewall options that software can't do.

Speed Disk - Mac OS X has done its own defragmentation for small files (20 MB or less). For larger files, having a scratch partition that can be reformatted as needed functions better with less data loss risk. Although partitioning itself will need erasing the hard disk in most instances.

Disk Doctor - Alsoft Disk Warrior and Micromat Techtools Pro offer better directory optimization, and Apple's Disk Utility is less risky for smaller jobs.

Retrospect - frequently this software has needed updating for matching the operating system. Shirt Pocket Superduper, Apple's Time Machine, and Bombich Carbon Copy Cloner have been less sensitive to operating system changes.

Unerase - Prosoft Data Rescue, Subrosasoft Filesalvage, Boomerang's Boomerang, and Stellar's Data Recovery software all recover data without needing to be installed first at varying levels of reliability. A backup plan is recommended regardless, but Unerase will usually need to have been installed first before it can find files to recover.

Good grief. I'm not certain what you mean by 'malicious scripts' perhaps you can be more specific, but you should remove Norton, it is a horrendous piece of malware. Depending on exactly what you are trying to do there will be much better options out there. You certainly don't need to be actively scanning your whole machine, which is what Norton will be trying to do, thereby slowing it down. Of course, if it just slows it down you'll be getting away lightly.

Norton isn't so much Malware, as misinformedware. They try to get you to buy into the same market as a PC, but it is not a PC unless you install Windows on it. And because it is designed to treat issues that don't exist, it acts as bad as having the wrong treatment for a disease. Ever since Mac OS 8.1 in the mid-90s they had issues trying to be a PC maintenance software for a Mac. And they repeatedly used the same algorithms for treatment well into Mac OS X. Unfortunately while the techs were aware this was an issue, for some reason the people who market the software never got the message it either needs to be scrapped, or rewritten from the start.

Norton is its own worst enemy. You don't need it so definitely remove it. It will slow down your Mac.

The hatter wrote:
almost no one here and commenting has used Norton in years...

Who would?



-mj