Noel,

Some points:

There seems to be a groundswell of opinion (whatever that means!) that
Norton AV is greatly improved these days (essentially far less
resource-hungry than it has been since circa 2003). I expect the SystemWorks
or whatever they do these days is still awful, and really, everyone should
just not use firewalls from any of these not-primarily-firewall-software
companys! For software firewalls - essential even with a router with a
firewall - Comodo and OnlineArmor are probably the best free ones. I'm using
Comodo widely thses days.

Do, please, call what you label here 'ad-bearing' the rather more
appropriate 'nag ware'. Though I'd be fascinated to know accurate statistics
as to the sum affect of intrusive pop-ups on, say, AVG usage. I for one will
never use it again! Or indeed the equally-awful-these-days Zone Alarm.

My opinion on Avast! is mixed. I still dislike it intensely for look and
feel, though others patently like it, but the important thing is it seems to
perform pretty well (on a par with Antivir, which I am now using on the
everyday system despite having a couple of months left on my NOD32 license).

It is easy to disable the Antivir nagscreen (and the Diskeeper Lite, come to
that!).

Finally, in not one of my own trials over the years nor any test by the
reputable testing labs nor in any in any sense rigorous review I've seen has
any Microsoft anti-malware product peformed even as well as average.
Generally it has been about on a par with Norton/McAfee at their worse.

Shane


Noel Paton wrote:
Glad you got through the Wall!
Don't forget, chances are that the Norton you got is only a trial
(maybe 3months?) - so you'll have to stump up sooner or later for
their paid offering if you want to keep it.
There are very good free AV offerings from the likes of Avira, Alwil,
AVG, and even MS, as well as others. All come without the excess
baggage that is the rest of the Norton stuff.
The first three are slightly cut-down (usually in terms of
configurability), ad-bearing (for the paid version) apps - MS's
offering (Microsoft Security Essentials) is actually a consumer
version of their Enterprise AV - and once installed, you almost don't
notice it's there.


Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
www.crashfixpc.co.uk
"Rockytsquirrel" wrote in message
...
Greetings Mike,
Correct, there is a way to allow LAN through the NORTON Firewall,
but I'll need to research the IP addresses to all the other
machines and then their individual names or ID's..
Currently I do not know that information. It then is added to an
exception page in the NORTONS firewall setup.
However, I was able to access the ME machine I wanted by shutting down
the NORTON firewall.
That 1 hour access saved me 4 hours of copy and paste via flash
drive.. ;-)

Tks to all who offered help and advice.
I think I'm beginning to get a feel for this win 7..
( and even the NORTONS which has a grip on it..) LOL

tks again
RTS


"Mike M" wrote in message
...
Once you get rid of the Norton firewall and can "see" the other
machines on the network (the four devices probably being your
router, Vista PC and 2x Win Me PCs) you should have no problem with
your Win 7 machine accessing files on any Win Me shares, you should
also be able to communicate both ways between your Vista and Win 7
machines. Similarly if you were to have a machine running XP you
would also be able to establish two way communication.

Nevertheless I would have thought that you should be able to
configure Norton's firewall to permit access. Surely there has to
be a setting or option on it that identifies blocked machines and
allows you to permit access?

And now to bed ...
--
Mike M


Rockytsquirrel wrote:

Greetings Mike,
Yep, first thing I found is NORTONS firewall has totally
blocked all LAN connections, NORTONS says there are 4 devices on
the network but without the IP address and connection machine
name it will not open the path.. As Noel suggested I'm looking
for a way to shut down the firewall, but it may take a while for me
to get famililar enough with it to find the correct
settings. Ever since Peter Norton sold his company its been in a
downward
spin...
I was hoping to keep things as they were on this new machine till
I got a better understanding of how it works but if this is any
indication I may not be able to wait. ;-)

Mike, as for the networking and file sharing, the ME's don't
need to access the win 7 machine, I was just wanting the win 7
machine to link with the ME's so I could move all the txt files
and html's, jpg. mov, and the like to the newer system..

(the newer machine can burn DVD's ;-) which helps with
backups)
tks again for all the feedback