acronis and norton

[guncrasher]

i bought a wd hard drive and downloaded acronis.  acronis works great, but i just found out that it also installs norton anti virus.  now norton doesnt not show up in the action center or in the install/unistall options.  I only found it by doing a search of my hard drive.  any ideas how to remove it?  it causes firefox to not close completely and since i have eset i dont see the need to have norton anywhere on my computer.

semp

[columbus]

norton removal tool!

http://majorgeeks.com/Norton_Removal_Tool_SymNRT_d4749.html

i love acronis too! but ghost is good too in certain situations

[Tigger29]

hrmm that's strange.  I too have the free Acronis "western digital" edition, but it did not put Norton on my system.  You have to pay close attention to the installation screens with the software.

A lot will try to sneak other things in (such as toolbars, antivirus, etc) and it looks like you're simply agreeing to their 'terms of service' when in actually the "I AGREE" button you've been taught to just blindly click is for installing something else on your system.  They also sometimes make it look like you have to install it to use their software, when in fact... you don't.  One way to check for this is the UNCHECK the "I agree" button and if the "NEXT" button is not greyed out... then you can still continue.

Usually it is free software that employs these tactics, but I've seen my share of off the shelf PAY software that does this too.  Personally, if I find a program that requires me to install for example the "ASK.com TOOLBAR" in order to install the software, I'll simply click CANCEL and delete the program and find an alternative.  I understand the guys who make free software have to make their money somehow (advertising, kick backs from other software developers, etc) but my rule of thumb is if I find a free software that I like and use often, I will donate to their cause, or pay to register their product.  If everyone followed this example, then there would be no need on their part to try to sneak things in like that.

You have to be just a bit smarter and more observant to keep your system from getting all clogged up these days.

Here is the link for the OFFICIAL western digital version of Acronis:  http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en

[guncrasher]

I reinstalled acronis and really read everything including the agreement, nowhere does it say it will install norton.  but as soon as I reinstalled it, did a search and this is what i found.  norton removal tool will not remove it, unless I uninstall acronis first.  let me know if I am mistaken about it actually being in my system since, i cant find under unistall manager.



semp

[columbus]

NRT will remove all those Norton products listed when it runs. if its one of those norton security scan you will have to uninstall manually. you can use "revo uninstalller" for that if there is no entry listed in the uninstall programs.

[Tigger29]

I reinstalled acronis and really read everything including the agreement, nowhere does it say it will install norton.  but as soon as I reinstalled it, did a search and this is what i found.  norton removal tool will not remove it, unless I uninstall acronis first.  let me know if I am mistaken about it actually being in my system since, i cant find under unistall manager.

semp

I didn't actually install anything.. those are just script files that the program will use SHOULD YOU HAVE NORTON INSTALLED.  Basically it's special instructions telling Acronis how to handle files generated by Norton.  Considering that you don't even have Norton installed, it probably won't even use those files.

[MonkGF]

You sure you have a legitimate copy of Acronis and not some grey-market thing that's installing "extras"?

[guncrasher]

Downloaded from western digital website.  Wd.com. 

Can somebody please check your installation see the picture for location of scrolls folder, I also found scrips for mccaffey and a couple of other av programs.  I am becoming to thing they're there to make it easier for acronis to back up while program is running.

Semp

[Tigger29]

Did you not read my post?  It didn't install ANYTHING... those are scripts that tell it how to handle files from those programs.  Here's the entire list of my c:\program files(x86)\Common Files\Acronis\BackupScripts folder:



This DOES NOT mean that any of this stuff is installed in my computer.. it's just files for Acronis to refer to if these things ARE installed.

Sheesh quit being so paranoid... just because a file called 'norton' exists on your hard drive somewhere doesn't mean that norton is installed!

[guncrasher]

Lol to be honest I didn't notice your first post. My bad I use a droidx to read and somehow missed it.  Reason I was paranoid is because when I first uninstalled acronis they remained and couldn't delete them directly.  Not even with nrt.  Anyway thanks for your help. Learned a couple of things today.

Semp

[Tigger29]

That's because the NRT only looks for files directly related to Norton itself (and its installation).  Lets say you were a Hollywood journalist and you wrote a story about Edward Norton, and saved that file as norton.doc.

That does not automatically make it part of Norton Antivirus, does it?  So if the NRT automatically deleted anything with "norton" in its name, then you'd probably be a bit ticked off if it deleted your story.

Well this is kind of the same thing.  These files have absolutely nothing to do with the actual installation of Norton anything and as a result the NRT isn't going to remove them.  They simply exist for Acronis to use should Norton (or any of the other software in that list) already exist on your system.  This is because those programs handle their files in a specific way, and Acronis needs to know that information so that when it backs up their files, it doesn't render them unusable.

If you don't like these files existing on your computer, simply uninstall Acronis, reboot, and then you should be able to delete them (as they should no long be marked as "in use").  If that doesn't work, then you should be able to do so from Safe Mode, or by changing their attributes manually.

[guncrasher]

Thanks for the explanation left.them is acronis. Is a great program still amazon and how it.works while windows.is.running.  tha.ks again.foe ur explanation.


Semp.