Vegas, Norton, CCAPP.exe & performance

[Bob Costa]

WHen I started using Vegas, I noticed that my system will grind to a halt at times, requiring a reboot. It does not do it all the time, but after months of aggravation it finally broke completely which allowed/forced me to find the cause. It is not exactly a Vegas issue, and not exactly a Norton issue, and not exactly a WIN Explorer issue. But if you find that you are having performance problems, check to see how much a process called CCAPP.exe is using. If it seems excessive or possibly thrashing, you need to empty the %temp% directory from your system. You may also see it when you shut down the system, as you get a report of CCAPP.exe not responding to shutdown. Too big a temp directory evidently upsets Norton, and Vegas can do that with its work files...

I hope this helps someone along the way...

[David Jimerson]

It's a very good idea not to have virus protection running at all when editing video -- ot any other resource-sapping background application.

[Sean Seah]

What exactly is the CCAPP?? Is that a process from Norton? I reformatted my HDD once due to that!! Now I know what I should do.. thanks!

[Bob Costa]

Yep. CCAPP is the program that manages the other Norton processes. If you removed it, you no longer have Norton AV or Internet protection. See the Symantec website for some FAQs about what to do, but they are very clear that disabling it basically disables your protection.

[Glenn Chan]

You can disable real-time scanning for Norton. That should fix things?

[Tony Rockliff]

In many years experience as a PC consultant, one of the very first things I do with a new client is completely remove anything Norton (or McAfee) from their systems (no easy task due to how insidiously they wrap themselves around the operating system and the registry). This always results in a snappier, far less crash-prone system. I usually replace it with AVG which causes none of the problems associated with Norton or McAfee.

[Bob Costa]

Does AVG provide equal or better protection to Norton (Antivirus, SPam, popups, spyware, etc...) ? Security to me is l
ot more important than response.

[Tony Rockliff]

AVG is for antivirus and for that it does a superb job. For the other things you mention, the free Microsoft (believe it or not) AntiSpyWare does an excellent job, for pop-ups there are numerous free tools (I use the one in SlimBrowser) and for spam I prefer Mailwasher.

If Norton works for you it is probably less hassle just to leave it but just be aware that is not kind to systems. I once did a series of tests over a period of a few weeks on several systems that showed that Norton CrashGuard employed the following sequence:

1) It would intercept and let you recover from crashes
2) After a while it would intercept but not let you recover from crashes
3) After a few weeks more it would actively create crashes.

By far my least favorite of PC programs and I won't let anything Norton near any of my systems. McAfee is not quite as bad but it does tend to slow systems considerably.

[Glenn Chan]

Norton sells a variety of products, so I don't think it's fair to label all of them as being bad products. In my opinion, most but not all of their products are poor. Norton's firewall should be avoided, it causes the most problems of the firewall programs out there (this is from volunteering at protonic.com, a free tech support site; Norton products get many tickets). Norton GoBack is buggy. Norton Antivirus is very slow at scanning, and doesn't always uninstall properly. AVG (free) and NOD32 (have to pay for it) is what I would recommend. NOD32 scans very fast and is rated 100% by virus bulletin (although other tests give the edge to other products).

Norton Ghost is a good program (some people like Acronis TrueImage better).

2- To add onto what Tony is saying:
Microsoft Antispyware is a great program. For added protection, throw in Spyware Blaster (donation-ware).
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

Spyware Blaster stops sites that are known to be nefarious from installing spyware onto your system. It's donationware.

For pop-ups, I use the built-in pop-up stopper in Mozilla Firefox (free / open source). I'd avoid Internet Explorer as it is targeted the most of exploits.

For spam, Spambayes (free / open source) is excellent (doesn't mark good mail as spam [unlike some other methods], and gets 90% of spam). It works as an Outlook plug-in.

For firewall, the one built into XP Service Pack 2 is excellent. It's free and easy to use and doesn't limit functionality most of the time (does this less than other firewalls).

[Newdjeen Klime]

I Dont use antivirus, firewall, ant ispyware etc programms on my NLE computer! Why? Becous I NEVER serfing in WWW from my Video Editing workstation! Why? Because if my computer does not work, if I can't finishing job - I lose more money.
Just Present - you work with the project and... oups - you see "Hi" from a new virus, OS crashed, and virus hurt the information...
Gentelmens, you wont see a best productivity & best perfomance on yours NLE computers? Just uninstall Internet Explorer on, disconnect all unnecessary services, setup your's computers for NLE use and you understand about what im speak.
For surfing in the Internet I use P-3 500Mhz/256Мб - it more than enough.

PS Sorry for my English

[Sean Seah]

Hmm..standalone pc for NLE is a nice option provided we can afford a spare PC for surfing.Nice one!