was running Norton Antivirus but the subscription to the updates expired. so, per recommendations on this board, I down loaded AVG.

Norton is still loaded, but not scheduled to scan the computer, while AVG is set to scan every night.

now, every morning, I find a message from Norton that "repair successful, your computer is now safe to use." I click the finish button and get another message, identical save for details, implying two repairs had been done.

While this message is displayed, all scanning has been halted, meaning that AVG resumes as soon as the two Norton messages are cleared.

AVG quickly flashes up its own two messages saying "Virus found". Each time I am offered several options on how to handle the infection, but when I click on any choice, I am told that option is not available.

After clearing the second AVG massage, it continues for several minutes and then declares it is "Done" with "no viruses found."

the two files cited by AVG are in the Norton "quarantine" folder.

Do I truly have a virus, or are the two antivirus programs simply finding each others library of known viruses?

what is going on here?

thanx for any advice.

dave

both norton and AVG have quarantine folder's where virus's are stored until they are able to be deleted by the relevant program. Therefore, it is likely that AVG is identifying the virus in the Norton folder.

You could delete the virus manually from the Norton folder and that should cure the conflict/identifier you're getting. It's testament that they are both doing their respective jobs...

I've never cared for Norton myself. It seems to bog the computer and let a lot of stuff through. If I were you, I'd uninstall it now that your subscription has run out.

I run AVG, and it misses some things as well. Every so often, I run Trend Micro (free online scan at www.antivirus.com). It's a good program and doesn't conflict with AVG.

Sorry to hijack,

I bought a laptop with Norton already installed as a 3 month trial version, and there's no way to remove it in the "add/remove programs" tool. Is there any other way to remove Norton?

Ta,
Nick

Also another thing to note is that most virus checkers run as active scanning.
What this means is that when data is read/written to the drive the AV program will be looking at that data to find patterns of known viruses.

If you have more than one of these AV programs running at once its more than possible that they are both checking data as its read/written which will mean that you computer will slow down a LOT.

Using SymNRT (or Rnav2003 / RnisUPG for older versions) you can remove Norton even if its pre-installed and not in you add/remove programs menu, or if its messed up and will not uninstall normally. Get the tools here:

<Norton's removal page HERE>

Don't run 2 Anti-virus programs at once it will cause issues as pointed out by GAV.

Norton is very good but is memory hungry and not one for older machines.

Try AVGfree edition from here - http://free.grisoft.com/doc/Get+AVG+FREE/lng/us/tpl/v5

or

AntiVIR also FREE from here - http://www.free-av.com/

-Steve-