Norton Ghost 14.0 Review

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(More customer reviews)Symantec Ghost 14 seems to be a merge of features between Symantec's older Ghost product line with Symantec's disastrous "save and restore" product, which for some strange reason is still offered in version 2.0.
You can see my reviews for Save and restore here on amazon to see why my copy ended up in the garbage can.
I have been using ghost in its various incarnations for several years, when it used to run off a floppy drive, so i am very familiar with its capabilities. Symantec Ghost 14 can backup files or your entire computer's drives if so desired to another computer on a network or to a USB drive. It can do this on a schedule.
The features of Ghost 14 on paper are impressive, so i decided to give it a test by installing the product on my laptop and creating a complete backup to a network drive on another computer. The entire backup was completed in less than 15 minutes. Then i decided to create an updated recovery disc for my laptop to do a full recovery, Ghost automatically recognized the fact that my original Recovery Disk had been burned to a rewriteable disc, and proceeded to erase and burn a new updated version on the same disc.. very impressive.
Unfortunately, as soon as rebooted my laptop with the Recovery Disc and i put an ip address on the interface (i am not running DHCP on my network) i wasn't able to connect to the computer containing the backup, due to some kind of authentication error.. so no matter what i did, i wasn't able to get past this hurdle.. so i am left with a complete computer backup i am not able to access..
Imagine, how would you feel if you computer died and you weren't be able to restore, thanks to Symantec buggy software, despite having an entire backup of it???
What is the point of all the countless fancy features if this product fails at its most useful feature.. which is to restore your computer's hardrive in case of failure?
For all intents and purposes, Norton Ghost 14 is another piece of semi-functional software.. with partially working features, pretty much like every product Symantec makes...
I don't recommend purchasing this product, unless you are somewhat computer literate and are able to get through the bugs that are present in this product.
UPDATE 1: When i booted my laptop using the recovery disc, every time i tried to map the recovery point share on a computer on the network, i keep on getting the following error message: A specified logon session does not exist.
After doing some online research, i was able to figure out how to fix this error by entering the name of the computer followed by the login name in the following format compname\username when prompted for a user / password to map the drive. I will post another update to see if recovery works as advertised.
UPDATE 2: When i booted my laptop using the updated recovery CD, and i mounted the recovery point using the compname\username trick to authenticate, i was able to dump the entire laptop's drive image and do a full recovery. The catch is that i work on the field, and I was able to find out the solution on my own, but less savvy users will probably have to resort to having to call Symantec, etc etc, so when you purchase this product expect to spend some time making it work and make sure you TEST the recovery process if you can.. because the last thing you want to find out is that your recovery process doesn't work when you really need it.
UPDATE 3: I tried to create a backup of my Windows 2000 Dell laptop.. but Norton Ghost 14 doesn't support Windows 2000.. so beware.
UPDATE 4: Unlike Norton's disastrous Save and Restore, Ghost doesn't go on the internet and check the serial number every time you install it on a computer, I know this after i installed my copy of Save and Restore one too many times to one of my 4 computers and the serial number became "blacklisted" and the product ended up in the garbage can.
This good news means that if you want want to make backups of multiple computers, you can just purchase ONE copy of Norton Ghost.
UPDATE 5: Feb 2009
I just tried to move a hardrive with a bootable partition (Windows XP) and a data partition to a bigger SATA Drive with Norton Ghost 14.
After installing the new hardrive on the computer and partitioning using Windows XP, i used Ghost to copy the bootable partition and the data partition to the new drive's partitions.
The results were as follows:
1-The bootable partition copied ok, and the new drive boots from the partition, the only problem is that when i try to login into Windows XP, the system logs me off inmmediately. This is the same problem i had with Norton Save and Restore.
2-I spent over an hour copying the data partition using Ghost 14.. but at the end, the program gave me an error message telling me that the copy couldn't be copied because the system had ran out of memory.
The data that i tried to copy was around 300Gb.
After the Ghost error, all the data the program had supposedly copied was inaccessible because the partition couldn't be mounted by Win XP, so i had to reformat the new partition using the disk utilities in Win XP and use Microsoft's FREE copy utility ROBOCOPY to copy all the files from one partition to another.
The copy worked fine.
Norton Ghost couldn't do something a FREE utility can.
I ended up connecting a CD drive to the computer to boot from a Ghost 2003 CD, and used that program to copy the C partition to the new drive and was finally able to migrate to the new hardrive.
UPDATE 6: 2009-11-14
I was forced to use Norton Ghost 14 to update my computer's laptop hardrive since Ghost 2003 cannot backup an active drive to a firewire connected external drive.
So this is what i did:
1-I booted my laptop with the Norton Ghost 14 CD created specifically for my laptop when i installed the software on it.
2-i backed up my entire laptop hardrive to an external 1tb firewire drive.(bear in mind trying to backup the drive while Windows was running failed every time, so i had to boot from the Norton CD and back it up the old fashioned way.. just like in Ghost 2003!)
3-Physically replaced the laptop's old drive with the new one.
4-I booted my laptop with the Norton Ghost 14 CD. The software was able to find the recovery point in the firewire drive and i was able to do a recovery to the new drive. At no point i was prompted to restore the MBR or to make the new drive bootable.
5-You will think all is well, right? but when i booted the laptop off the new drive, what do you think happened?
Nothing.. the drive refused to boot and i got a blank screen, because it didn't occur to the geniuses at Symantec that most new drives don't have bootable master records (MBR), so the data is in the new drive, but it won't boot.
So i had to get my Windows XP CD, do a dummy installation so the drive boots, and then dump the Norton Ghost Image on the drive AGAIN.
Only when i tried to restore the drive a second time i was prompted to restore the original drive image and the drive MBR.. What a joke!
Symantec is the Microsoft of security and disk utility software, their consumer and pro-level software is garbage, and since their horrible products can't compete in the marketplace, the only way they can get market share is to buy other competing products / companies such as Altiris, Partition Magic and many others!
This is the last time i brother with Symantec's garbage software.
After this, i am uninstalling all traces of Ghost from my laptop and i looking for some other software package.. there has to be something better out there than this piece of junk.
Needless to say, don't waste your time purchasing Norton Ghost 14, unless you want to spend endless hours trying to make it work.

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Symantec Endpoint Protection (10 user) Review

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(More customer reviews)I have been a longtime user of Norton Corp Edition products and for the most part have been stratified. It only seemed natural when our current subscription to Corp Edition 10 expired that we move to version 11 also called SEP (Symnatec Endpoint Protection) on our Windows 2003 SBS running SQL, Exchange and Act. After reading the manuals the installation seemed pretty straightforward. This is a very different product from version 10 so defiantly plan to spent some time reading the SEP manuals first. After installing the manager on our SBS via the upgrade I ran the deployment manager to install the clients, which seem to go well on only three of the eight XP-pro clients. I had to manually install the software on the other clients due to problems with Outlook getting mail from our Exchange server. The ant-virus client deployment also failed on the server even when I tried to manually install SEP it seemed the version 10 client would not uninstall. So I followed the lengthy task from the support web site to manually remove version 10 from the server and then manually re-installed SEP. After the install Live-Update kept failing. I talked to Symantec tech support several times and per there request removed all Norton/Symantec products and reinstalling SEP a couple of more times after running a couple clean-wipe utilities they provided but Live-Update would still not work. Symantec eventually suggested I go back to version 10 until some of the compatibility issues are resolved with SEP. After investing over 12 hours on this upgrade and then reinstalling the old version we are now considering moving to another venders product.

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Norton Internet Security 2008 up to 3 Users Review

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(More customer reviews)I do not typically write rejoinders from previous reviews, but on this occasion I feel it necessary. As a longtime user and tester of antivirus/antispyware/security suite software, I have been terribly disappointed over the years by what has (or had) become of Norton products. Starting around 2004 they transformed into bloatware, slowing down computers, overhauling the CPU, and basically were a nuisance. NIS 2006 was probably the worst of the lot, although McAfee's security suite software this last year gives it competition in the department of ineptitude.
To give some credit where it is due, Symantec apparently listened, read, and paid attention to the complaints, and they revamped their product. NIS 2008 won over this critic, and I must admit that it was a pleasant surprise when I installed the trial version on my work and home computers (200 GB hard drive, 1.8 GHz Duo Processor, Windows Vista Home Premium on the home laptop). Since I like to test software on my computers to empirically observe the chaos that ensues, I was not expecting much. If anything, my experiences with Norton products instilled in me a sense of foreboding futility. I cannot stress enough how unexpectedly satisfying it was to witness a security software company finally comprehending the concept of listening to its customers.
What impressed me most about NIS 2008 was the ease of use, the simplification of the interface, although its graphics still leave much to be desired (as with the 2007 version), and even featured a more user friendly program with help and assistance options that seem to actually assist a computer user. Best of all, it is not as cumbersome on my computer usage as previous versions, and it is barely noticeable on my CPU. It also has a much better browser defender, which includes one for Mozilla Firefox (after numerous complaints over its past omissions to provide security for non-Explorer web browsers). The browser defender also doubles as a password protector on web pages that you frequent.
Another departure from older versions is that it is easy to install (installs quickly, actually), does not interfere with the booting and re-booting of my computer, and does not slow down my employment of other programs (like Microsoft Office). All of these are areas of progress for NIS.
There are a couple of cautions, however. One, if you do want to use this program, try the trial download first, to see for yourself (it is good for two weeks). Also, if you purchase the product, make sure to download the add-ons for NIS 2008, which contains vital elements like anti-spam and parental controls. You need this add-on (it is located on the Symantec site) for email protection at the very least, so it is highly recommended that you use it.
Compared to other security suite software currently on the market, NIS 2008 is certainly as good, if not better, than the competition. This is not saying much to the extent that much of what constitutes security suite software (like CA, Zone Alarm, McAfee) has over time become gradually worse, less efficient, and slower. NIS 2008 is an advance over its previous versions and the competition. Among the other security suite software, Kaspersky Internet Security is the only program I have tried that is nearly as non-intrusive and maintains the ability to at least detect viruses as efficiently as NIS (although the security tests I used on these programs were more easily detectable than those utilized in more rigorous tests). As long as you are willing to pay and want the protection of a quality antivirus with antispy/malware program, NIS 2008 is a good choice.

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Norton Internet Security 2009 Review

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(More customer reviews)After years of running Norton Antivirus products, with ever increasing demands on system resources, as well as slowing down the machines these products were installed on, the completely rewritten version of Norton Internet Security 2009 has gone a very long way towards correcting years of bloatware code that was made worse with every new release.
This version installs fast, runs fast, and is almost entirely unobtrusive, with one very major exception.
This software will break your home or small business network.
In a well-documented bug first discovered in October 2008, Norton interferes with, and eventually blocks access to other machines on your home network. Norton admits there is a problem, and has been stalling customers for months with promises for a fix, yet keeps pushing the release date out further and further.
Install Norton 2009, and eventually all of the computers on your home network under My Network Places will disappear, and will eventually be blocked from access. While you can frequently manually reach your other networked machines by typing their addresses directly into an address bar, software that depends on access to your other networked machines directly (index, backup, small business collaboration tools, etc.) usually cannot work this way, and you are effectively cut off from using those applications. Worse, over time, Norton will begin periodically cutting off access to your networked machines. Suddenly file copying between machines fails, extremely long delays in accessing other computers on your network occurs, and your frustration level mounts.
Norton admits the only current solution to this problem is to completely uninstall Norton 2009 Antivirus/Internet Security products. There is no other workaround.
Worse yet, the responsiveness of the company to major software bugs has been less than acceptable. It literally takes months for even the most urgent bugs to get identified, corrected, and then put through a laborious test procedure. To add insult to injury, it then takes up to six additional weeks for the fixed code to be incorporated into their slow update release schedule and finally reach every customer.
This truly mars an otherwise promising product and makes it an unacceptable option for those dependent on networked machines, such as a home or small business network. If you are dependent on your network to access remote hard drives or collaborate in an office environment, Norton 2009 products are absolutely not acceptable for use and I strongly recommend you look elsewhere until the company finally fixes the problem.
A very lengthy discussion about this problem can be found on the Norton Community Forum. Simply search for "NAV blocks access to hard disk." The later discussions in the thread contain the most pertinent information.

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Norton 360 3.0 1-User/3Pc Review

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(More customer reviews)I first started using Norton 360 on my laptop running Windows XP and it was pretty awful. It would always "ding" an alert or notice on every legitimate web site or online retailer. In addition, my laptop became terribly s-l-o-w. So bad in fact I thought it was my memory, and even with a memory upgrade it was crawling along. After that experience, I evolved into a new laptop running Windows Vista and bought Kaspersky Internet Security. This was a total disaster. Kaspersky, in my experience, is total junk! EVERY web page and browsing experience was blocked with so many "threat" notices that I had to disable it just to use Internet explorer. Not even Mozilla Firefox had a chance. So, in need of relief, I saw this "new" version of Norton 360. I removed the Kaspersky and installed Norton 360 Version 3.0 (As of April 8, 2009 be careful what you buy, when I was shopping, many stores were still carrying the older 2.0 version.) I did cautiously backup my system before installing this, and after installing it; it pretty much works as described. It will keep log-ins, and passwords stored within its program for various sites, like Amazon.com for example and these are password protected.
What is more noticeable to me, over my past experience with Norton 360 Version 1.0 is the "diet" the software has undergone. On my laptop, again running Windows Vista, (two years old) there does not appear to be any lag, or sluggishness, and you could argue it is faster than when Kaspersky was running. At first I thought the protection was not running, but it is, and I don't notice it.
As far as options, there is a Premier Version 3.0 and a "plain" Version 3.0. The main difference, as you see on the back of the box, is an upgrade in online storage. I have not tried to use the online storage and don't plan on using it. I already have a big enough external back-up drive and I do not like uploading my personal or sensitive files for someone else to hold onto. But it's your call in the end.
Pros: "light" software, hardly noticeable, compatible with Windows Vista, and able to securely remember log-ins and passwords
Cons: Having to buy this every year
Hope this review helps!


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Norton 360 Version 3.0 offers proven performance, delivering today's fastest and lightest all-in-one solution for protecting your PC and all your online activities. It protects against viruses, worms, hackers, and botnets, safeguards against online identity theft, protects important files, and keeps your PC tuned and running at peak performance. Completely automated and easy to use, Norton 360 works quietly in the background, with virtually no impact on PC performance, to provide comprehensive protection for everything computer users care about. By offering an unmatched combination of performance and protection, it helps you get the most out of your PC and your online experience.

New--Ultra fast and super light performance Norton 360 Version 3.0 is the fastest and lightest all-in-one PC protection solution available on the market today. It delivers industry-leading protection for your PC and all your online activities while using significantly fewer system resources, so it won't slow you down:
Startup time is less than 1 minute.
Scans take less than 3 minutes.
It uses less than 10 MB of memory.
New--Rapid installation gets you up and running quickly in less than 1 minute.
New--Norton Pulse Updates deliver up-to-the-minute protection against new threats every 5 to 15 minutes.
New--Norton Insight scans only those files at risk, saving time and dramatically improving protection with faster, fewer, shorter scans.
New--Smart Startup Manager turns off unnecessary programs to accelerate PC startup time.
It automatically performs tasks in the background and during PC idle time to eliminate interruptions and minimize any impact on PC performance.

Industry-leading PC security Our latest virus, spyware, botnet, firewall, and network protection technologies protect you and your PC at all times.
New--Botnet detection Prevents others from taking control of your PC to access your private information or use it to host an attack on other PCs.
New--Norton Safe Web Identifies unsafe websites and suspicious sellers so you can surf and shop with confidence.
Norton Identity Safe Identifies fraudulent websites and validates authentic ones to protect your identity when you buy, bank, and browse online.
Password Manager Automatically detects, stores, and secures logins and passwords so you can have highly secure passwords without having to remember them.
Secure, one-click login Conveniently and securely fills in online forms at your request and submits logins and passwords to your frequently visited sites while blocking eavesdropping programs like keystroke loggers.
Browser Protection Protects against Web-based attacks that use vulnerabilities in your browser to infect your PC.
New--Norton Pulse Updates Provide continuous protection against new threats automatically.
Automated backup and restore Flexible, automated, and easy-to-use backup and restore capabilities protect photos, music, documents, and other important files from loss.
Includes 2 GB of secured online storage (with option to purchase more) (requires high-speed internet access).
Easy-to-use set-and-forget features automatically back up your valuable files to a local hard drive or secured online site according to the schedule you set.
New--Norton Drive lets you queue up important files to be backed up whenever your computer is idle, so backups won't get in the way of your computing experience.
Supports a variety of local backup destinations, including external hard drives, Blu-ray Disc, HD-DVD, and iPod.

Network monitoring Protects your network and alerts you when you connect to an unsecured wireless network.
PC Tuneup Automatically cleans up unnecessary Internet clutter and temporary files, defragments your hard drive, and optimizes and maintains your PC to keep it running at peak performance.
New--Diagnostic recommendation Checks your PC to fix common problems and provides recommendations to help you make your PC run better.
New--Smart Startup Manager Turns off unnecessary startup programs so your PC starts up faster.
Free 24/7 support Provides easy, one-click access to expert support at no charge via email, live chat, or on the phone.
Monthly report Shows the details of your PC's activities, such as threats caught, tune-up tasks performed, and files backed up.
Ongoing protection Keeps your computer protected from the latest Internet risks by automatically renewing your subscription at the regular subscription price (plus applicable tax), so you don't have to do it.
New--Real-time SONAR (Symantec Online Network for Advanced Response) Detects emerging spyware and viruses before traditional cures are available.
Network map Provides a visual picture of your network and each device connected to it, allowing you to view the security status of all Norton products on the network.
Optional antispam and parental controls Are available for easy download via the Norton Add-on Pack.

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