Out of all the anti-virus and utility suites that are out in the online market, Norton Anti-Virus and Utilities are easily the most recognizable and also one of the oldest out there with their existence beginning way back during the DOS and early Windows days. Norton Anti-Virus and other Norton products have received a lot of praise from critics and regular consumers, but negative reviews were also thrown into the mix.
This had lead many unsatisfied users to uninstall the application and find something less resource intensive and more reliable. Even if these people believed to have found something better, more frustration ensues in actually getting Norton completely removed. In order to fully uninstall and remove Norton Anti-Virus and any other products without hassle, try any of the methods below.
Traditional Method
If you installed any of the Norton products properly, they should all appear on the “Add/Remove Programs” list (or “Programs and Features” list for Vista users). If you head there from the Control Panel and click on the entries, you can either uninstall the components or modify other installation options.
Even if you successfully uninstall and remove Norton Anti-Virus, try to find any remaining items that have the words “Symantec” or “LiveUpdate” in them. Norton is very popular when it comes to bloated software and taking them all out can be quite tedious especially if you have multiple Norton products installed. Consider trying the alternate methods in this case.
Alternate Methods
Fortunately, Norton has released its own removal tool to make the uninstallation process completely hassle free and is a more preferred method than doing it the traditional way. You can get a copy of the Norton Removal Tool by downloading it at their FTP site at ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/removal_tools/Norton_Removal_Tool.exe. The file is roughly 3 MB and should run as a standard application so you can run it immediately after you saved it on the desktop.
The removal tool supports full removal of Norton Anti-Virus products both old and new as well as other products including the entire SystemWorks suite, Norton Ghost, Norton 360, and other applications. A complete list of applications that are supported are listed when you run the tool. Follow the wizard and read everything so you understand what the tool does. A restart is also required afterwards.
If you unexpectedly run into problems with the removal tool, a 3rd party program called Perfect Uninstaller should do the job. Perfect Uninstaller works a lot like the Add/Remove programs, but has advanced uninstallation options in case others fail. When uninstalling Norton products using Perfect Uninstaller, make sure you boot the computer in safe mode first to ensure nothing else is running. Uninstallation should work using the “Standard Uninstall” option in Perfect Uninstaller. After that, there should be no traces of Norton including the registry area.
When removing tough applications like Norton becomes a huge hassle, try out Perfect Uninstaller because it can effortlessly remove all traces of an application better than the way the standard uninstallers handle the process.