Since you have quite a bit of conflicting information here, I want to reinforce that both Philipy and many of the other responses who recommend against using Norton are correct. I will even address the video of Leo Laporte stomping on the Norton box!

First of all, Norton has been known to be a resource hog in the past. According to Leo Laporte (the same guy stomping on the box!) in an episode of his weekly podcast and radio program, The Tech Guy, he stated that Norton claims that more recent versions of the A/V have been improved and don't have as much of an impact, but my personal experiences with most of these big "security suites" have been that they take up way too much system resources.

At this time, there's three Anti-Spyware/Anti-virus programs I would recommend. Two are free, one is commercial. The first is AVG which can be downloaded free from http://free.grisoft.com - The next is Avast Anti-Virus which you can get at http://www.avast.com/ - The third is a commerical product, and costs $30 to $40 a year. I actually picked mine up on newegg.com on sale for $15 but it's eSet's NOD32. Available at http://www.eset.com. All three of them are effective anti-virus and anti-spyware solutions.

Philipy is correct that even Norton shouldn't cause your computer to take an hour to fully boot. You should have the computer checked out by a professional or a pc-saavy friend. Most spyware/malware once on a PC is almost impossible to remove, so you would want to ensure that the computer is clean when you install any Anti-Virus application.

I definitely recommend backing up any personal data (music, movies,.documents, even program specific settings like favorites, bookmarks, etc...) prior to beginning any repair work on your computer.

Once you've done that, if you have to wipe your computer clean and reinstall windows and your programs, you won't have to worry about losing any data. Be thorough and go through your program listing and make sure you got everything. I personally use external USB drives for these backups. They're fairly inexpensive (You can get a 1TB external USB drive for $100 now-smaller ones for even less!)

Once your computer is cleaned an working properly (either after having it checked/repaired or reinstalled) then I would install one of the light-weight A/V applications myself or another response recommended.

Other recommendations I would make if you want to keep your PC safe is 1. Run the PC behind a router. Routers act like a firewall and prevent malicious content from randomly entering your PC from the Internet. 2. Always keep your PC up to date. Set windows update on automatic so it keeps your system patched. 3. If you do reinstall windows, install your anti-virus after installing and updating windows, but before installing any third-party software or surfing the web. 4. When surfing, be careful about what sites you go to, and what you click on. if you get a warning about viruses, make sure it's coming from your anti-virus program. Most spyware tries to trick you by showing you an alert that looks legit, but is the actual spyware disguised as an alert. 5. Use only legitimate software. Software downloaded over BitTorrent or Peer2Peer programs (Like limewire) can't be trusted and require more care and attention to run reliably.

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