I was upgrading a client to Sophos Anti-Virus from the Norton Security Suite. I uninstalled Norton and restarted the computer to ensure that it was completely removed. What I had removed was the computer’s ability to connect to the Internet.

I did everything imaginable to troubleshoot the connection. It would not resolve an IP address. I finally took the PC back to our office to continue working on it. After some research I discovered that I needed to download a separate application to perform a full uninstall of Norton. You would think that clicking a ‘Remove’ option in ‘Add/Remove Programs’ would have been adequate. It’s possible that Norton and I may not be on the same page.

I ran the uninstaller tool, restarted once more, and like magic the PC came back to life. If you find yourself in a similar situation a web search for ‘norton uninstaller’ will get you going in the right direction.

It’s clunky software like this that makes me proud of our partnership with Sophos. It offers our clients excellent protection without the overbearing behavior that has plagued anti-virus software for the past few years.