How to Uninstall Norton Antivirus Manually

Norton is an anti-virus program made by Symantec, which is often comes preloaded on manufactured computers. New computers often come with a free trail of Norton, after which the program will attempt to get one to subscribe to Norton for an annual fee. Norton Anti-virus is known for being memory intensive, causing a computer to run more slowly than it would with most other anti-virus programs. Considering that many free anti-virus programs exists which protect as well or better than Norton and use less memory, uninstalling Norton is a good way to free up system resources.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Go to the start menu and open the control panel. Certain versions of Norton Anti-virus may have a self uninstaller, and Symantec offers a Norton removal tool, but sometimes these tools do not work as well as a manual uninstall.

2. Click on the "Add/remove programs" tool in the control panel. In Windows Vista this may be called "Programs and Features."

3. Scroll down the list and highlight Norton Anti-virus. Double click, or right click, and select to uninstall the program. Select yes, if it asks whether to uninstall all components of the program.

4. Scroll through the rest of the list and uninstall anything else named Norton or Symantec.

5. Restart your computer.

6. Go the program files folder under "my computer," and delete any folders related to Norton or Symantec.

Tips & Warnings

• After uninstalling Norton, you can run searches for Norton and Symantec and delete any instances of these words that appear. Make sure you have a different anti-virus program running when you delete Norton.

Resources

• Getting rid of Norton Antivirus
• Norton Antivirus