I´ve just followed these steps because I´m in the same boat as you - Norton up for renewal and I´d rather not bother.

To the best of my knowledge I appear to have completely removed Norton from my system in one easy step. And not just the antivirus - I have done the whole internet security thing or whatever it was called.

I´ve installed the free AVG - no problems. Is it worth subscribing to AVG for the sixty dollars to get the extra services (such as firewall I think, and anti-spam stuff) or is the freebie usually adequate?

You won't have removed it all Keith, honest. Its a real bugger. I read loads of IT forums and asked questions on them. They basically told me that there will be stuff left which you have to remove manually, but unless you really know what you are doing its not worth the risk.

Just do the freebie Keith, its more than adequate. I just don't really understand why its free!!!

You can also download the AVG anti-spyware,its also free and run it once a week,I think the majority of users use the free version ,no problems.Your puter may have its own firewall,you dont need to run two.

Did you use the program from semantic I posted a link to on the lab forum ?, it should clear most of it.
If you have a router it will have a firewall on it, I think the XP firewall is OK too, that is what I use.
As jandy says the Anti Spyware is good also, but is a manual update, not auto like the anti virus.

I´ll do those searches to find out what has been left behind - but what are the implications of having some residual Norton stuff left on your comp? The AVG thing is working fine.

I just can not understand it.

Nothing has worked for me

Im not understanding it lol

Also if i get rid of all of norton will my pc be covered with just avg anti virus xxxx

I asked that. They are things like reporting files apparantly that don't have any detrimental effects afaik. Norton like to know what you're doing, where you are visiting Thats why I was told to leave them unless I knew what I was doing.
My AVG has worked fine since I removed Norton, and the pc seemed quicker also as I believe Norton slows it down

I did the searches - there is nothing left on my computer when I search for "Norton" or "nav". There are half a dozen hits for symantec, however I daren´t remove these as I have Symantec PC Anywhere installed on my machine which I need to keep, and I don´t know which Symantec files relate to Norton and which relate to PC Anywhere. If there is no real detrimental effects to leaving a handful of Norton files behind then I think I will just forget about it.

Its not norton or nav files ... I'll have to search for the extensions

Ahhh NIS was the one I was thinking of as well as NAV, symantec. As you say I should just leave well alone as it shouldn't effect it

I started by removing Norton from the "add and remove programmes" within the control panel.

Then I downloaded your programme and began the process. It only found one symantec product on my machine which was PC Anywhere. As I need to keep this programme I didn´t go any further.

I have the XP firewall and I´ll download the Anti-spyware and I guess that will be me covered?

It gets me confused not that it takes a lot lol.

I had computers

I think you may be better going step by step.............

1) Go into the control panel on your PC, go into add/ remove programs,scroll through until you find norton,select remove.

2) Download the remove synmatic tool,go into the link given you for this,a box will appear press run..........and then when its intsalled run it to remove Norton.It takes seconds to do.

AGV will cover you,you may need to reinstall and then install AGV again,not sure.

You could also download CCleaner and Spybot, both free , I run them has well.

Yes you should be ok with those, just update and scan with them every week, you will be suprised the amount of dross that slows your PC down you pick up on the net.

Another good one is BHOdemon that runs in the background and stops anything that changes your browser homepage to something you dont want.