I have spent most of my day trying to get through to Symantec about a problem with my Norton Anti-virus program. It no longer works, so I would like it fixed, especially since I paid to have it updated online. Next time I will buy my anti-virus from a computer store, so I have the physical product.
First it took over half an hour for me to even find a customer support phone number on their site. My other options were to pay for a tech support call or wait two days for an email answer – neither of which I wanted to do.
When I finally reached a live person on the phone, they transferred me to tech support, where the phone rang for almost half an hour before I finally hung up.
Norton Anti-Virus Removal Tool
For those of you who have Norton Anti-Virus, I found out after hours of frustration, that it isn’t possible to remove the program yourself. I have a new computer and being the non-fan of Norton that I am, I could hardly wait to delete it from my machine. But no matter what I tried, it wouldn’t work. The program is not even listed in Windows Add/Remove Programs files.
My niece is a computer technician, otherwise I would be out many hours, dollars, and pieces of hair. Apparently, the only way to get rid of Norton Anti-Virus is by going to their website and downloading a removal tool. After typing in some letters and agreeing to their terms, the tool sits on your desktop where it needs to be used a number of times (4 in my case) before the program actually leaves your life.
As you can tell, Norton has failed to gain my vote.
I’d forgotten that most new PC’s come installed with Norton Anti-virus software. If you’ve read my past posts, you know my hate affair with Norton. I knew from past experience that I had to go to the Norton website and get their removal tool.
But first I decided to check the control panel and was surprised to see that the program was listed and could be removed there. It could be because it was a trial version and I hadn’t paid for it. No matter what the reason, I was glad it was so easy to delete.
I did go to the Norton website to see if anything about the 2007 version was mentioned. The site has a download for their removal tool if you have Norton Anti-virus software from 2003-2006. There is also a note about removing the 2007 version, with instructions about saving the product key and then downloading the removal tool.
So save that product key and when you can’t stand Norton anymore, go download the removal tool. And don’t bother trying to contact the company, unless you enjoy wasting your time.
