Review and Giveaway: Norton PC Tuneup
December 3, 2008 by Deb
Filed under Giveaways, Recent Reviews, service
I’ve been working with computers for over ten years on a regular basis, both through various jobs I’ve held and here at home. Over that time, I’ve come to learn a great deal about how they work – and to understand a lot of the little tweaks and quirks that can help make them run faster – or slower – or even not at all. I’m still finding that there’s a lot for me to learn, and that’s why I’m glad that there are options like Norton Premium Services out there to help.
What it is:
![image001[2]](http://www.momstakeonthings.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/image0012.jpg "image001[2]"){kind=small}
Norton by Symantec has created a solution that is available to help PC users with those regular ‘tune up’ activities that most people either don’t know about or fail to do on a regular basis. Norton Premium Services allows Norton experts to connect with you one-on-one, listen to the problems you’re encountering, and then directly access your computer via the Internet so they can run diagnostic tests and fix the problems while you sit back and watch. In addition to making your PC run like new, they can also help with killing viruses, eliminating spyware, and installing Norton software, just to name a few.
The Norton PC Tune-up Service can help speed up your computer if it takes a long time to start up, or slows down when you open multiple programs. Some of the things that they do are a scan of your system in order to evaluate issues that might be affecting the PC’s performance, fine-tune some of the key areas that can help improve your computer’s speed and stability, assess your computer’s security and protection settings, and recommend steps to ensure top performance of your PC.
Here’s my take on it:
Courtesy of Mom Central, I had the opportunity to try out this service. I called the Norton PC Tune-up Service line and talked to Mike, who’s a fairly new representative there. In fact, I was his very first customer running Microsoft Vista. He was very polite and easy to work with, and made sure to let me know exactly what was happening at all times. Even during the several times that he had to place me on hold while we were getting the details of my promo code and service worked out, he asked every time if it was ok first.
The service is normally supposed to take about 30 minutes. In my case that stretched to well over an hour – mainly because of the initial issues with the promo code, and a couple of snags with getting the remote access set up. The way that the service works is that you stay on the phone with the technician while he or she remotely accesses your computer as well. They take control of your PC for the actual tune-up but make sure to talk you through exactly what they’re doing and why. Mike also made sure that I knew they specifically aren’t allowed to delete programs or make changes to your system without your express permission.
![Norton PC Tune-up[2]](http://www.momstakeonthings.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/nortonpctuneup2.gif "Norton PC Tune-up[2]")
In my case, the tune-up issues weren’t very many or very difficult since our desktop PC is a rather new one. Plus, since my husband and I are fairly computer savvy, we already perform many of the maintenance activities being recommended. What I can see this service being immensely helpful for are those PC users who don’t feel comfortable going into their computer’s settings and making changes, or who don’t know the inner workings of how Windows works. I’ve worked with many computer users in the past who never think twice about downloading software onto their systems, or whose desktops are full of excess (and often unnecessary) icons. In these cases, and especially for anyone with an older system or a limited amount of memory in their computer – the Norton PC Tune-up service should make a huge difference in the speed and efficiency of their system.
The bottom line:
Some of the things that Mike did to my PC were to check the programs that run when the system is started up and take out anything unnecessary, run the disk cleanup utlity, delete temporary files and empty the recycle bin, create a system restore point (something I was unfamiliar with even), check the amount of virtual memory and disable any unneeded services. At the end of the service, they compare your computer’s speed, memory, etc. with how it was beforehand, and even ours had improved a bit just form the few things that Mike was able to do on it. For most typical users, I would think that the difference would be much more dramatic as well.
Thank you, Mike for taking such good care of our computer!
Where can you find it?:
You can find out more information about this service at http://www.symantec.com/norton/support/premium_services/
premium_tuneup.jsp. The regular cost is $69.99.
Would you like to try it?:
Thanks to Mom Central, I have three extra promo codes for a free Norton PC Tune-up Service to give away to three lucky readers. If your computer is running slowly or you are having other issues that you think could be helped by the knowledgeable techs at Norton Premium Services, here are the rules:
- Enter by leting me know one way in which you think this service would help your computer system. Please don’t just say ‘choose me’, or your entry will be discarded.
- The contest will run until Saturday, December 13th at 11:59 pm EST. The winner will be selected through random drawing, contacted by e-mail, listed on this post and also submitted to PRIZEY.Fetch. This giveaway is open to the US and Canada.
- Please leave a valid e-mail address or other way to contact you! If you don’t wish to leave your e-mail address, please make sure that you leave a unique name and check back with PRIZEYWinners to see if you won. If the winner hasn’t responded within 3 days, an alternate winner will be chosen by random drawing.
- If you’d like extra entries, you can:
- Subscribe to my RSS feed (click on the orange icon in the upper right sidebar) or subscribe via e-mail – leave me a separate comment to let me know.
- Mention this contest on your blog with a link back to this post, and leave a separate comment with the link to your post so I can find it.
- Either Twitter about, ‘Stumble’, ‘Digg’ or ‘Kirtsy’ this post – leave me a separate comment with your username at whichever site you chose (one extra entry).
So that’s a total of 4 comments/entries if you do all of the extra entry options.
Good luck! 
THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED – the random number generator has chosen comments #67, #76, and #51 as the winners:
Congratulations to:
- Nanette Olson who said, “I could really use this to give my old computer a boost.“
- gina snow (no blog) who said, “make it run faster“
- Clifton Wade(no blog) who said, “My wonderful but disabled wife of more than 38 years needs a new computer to help her with her disablilites but a tune-up would be the next best thing. Thank you for this great contest and prize!“
I will be e-mailing you all shortly to work out the details!
UPDATE: I’ve had no response from one of the winners after multiple attempts to contact them. So I’ve redrawn a new winner for one copy of a Norton PC Tune-Up service. This time the random number generator has chosen comment #68 as the winner:
Congratulations to Pauline M (no blog) who said, “I have a laptop and a desktop. Though my laptop is great, my desktop could really use some TLC. It crashes every 3-4 pages I surf to, and has a hard time getting through pages with flash on them. It would be wonderful to reset the desktop to work efficiently again!“! I will be e-mailing you shortly to work out the details.
This post courtesy of:
www.momcentral.com
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My wonderful but disabled wife of more than 38 years needs a new computer to help her with her disablilites but a tune-up would be the next best thing. Thank you for this great contest and prize!
I hope, if I win this, I can find out if there are any bad things on my computer.
My computer is SLOW, my hard drive has crashed twice this year alone
I hope it would speed it right up! Thank you!
I think this product would get rid of the junk off my computer and make it run better
cool
My computer is running reallyyyy slow. I need some help with it. please enter me
What I think it could for my computer is what you mention about checking the programs that load on startup. I have some things that start that I am not sure should be doing so for efficiency’s sake, but I am afraid to delete them and don’t really know how.
I’m not completely helpless when it comes to computers, that is, until my father-in-law came down for Thanksgiving. I thought I would be nice and let him use it to check his emails…bad idea. I now have a trojan horse on it that won’t go away. I’ve tried reverting back to my last save point, virus sweeps only freeze up my laptop, it is downloading programs while deleting important system32 files, now it’s not even loading past the windows screen. Dell is going to charge me over three hundred dollars to fix it because (interestingly) my software warranty expired two months ago…shoot me…I have online classes starting in January, and I can’t keep borrowing the library computer. HELP!
This would help with our computer freezing up. Thank you very much.
I need this SO bad. My computer just totally shuts down while I’m doing something sometimes and says it’s doing a “memory dump”. It is doing all kinds of funky things!
i really need this for my computer because it runs really slow and i am do not know much about my computer to fix myself
I have a second hand PC & I’m not comfortable trying to remove the previous owners junk-this would really help.
My computer seems really slow to me, and I would love to find out why!! I think this program might be the anyswer!!
It would clean my computer out good. Thanks for the chance to win.
My computer is running slowwwww and I would love to win this prize. Thanks
I could really use this to give my old computer a boost.
All my software programs seem to be having an internal argument with each other. Perhaps this would help them run compatably.
I would hope it would speed my computer up and stop it from lagging so much. I’m sure I’ve got all kinds of junk that needs to be cleansed off the hard drive.
Thanks for the great giveaway.
I have a laptop and a desktop. Though my laptop is great, my desktop could really use some TLC. It crashes every 3-4 pages I surf to, and has a hard time getting through pages with flash on them. It would be wonderful to reset the desktop to work efficiently again!
stop my computer from freezing up
Great giveaway – would be good for us because our computer is around 3 years old, runs a little slow, and none of us feels comfortable enough to clean it up ourselves!
i really need this one
I need this in order to maintain my social (read; facebook) life. I have four siblings, and my little brother is always accidentally downloading spyware when he tries to get to webkinz, my little sister is always inadvertently adding malware when she downloads a new Fall Out Boy background, my other little brother is constantly messing up the system when he tries to overclock the computer, and my older brother is ceaselessly collecting trojans when he tries to watch NFL online. Srsly, how is a girl supposed to survive?
This would be great to have. I have been having issues with my computer freezing up!
make it run faster
This would be great, my computer has been running super slow and my spy ware must not be working.
Probably help me get rid of junk, thanks and happy holidays.
this is a great way to keep my computer running in tip top condition for awhile longer. We tune up our cars why not our computers?!
I have Norton 360 with 10 GB of storage so I am not having problems with my computer but please still enter me so I can give this as a gift.
Maybe this will fix my sloooooooooooowness
My husband needs this.
It would speed up my computer. Now the performance is slow.
Using it to clean my registry is what I would do with it!
I would like so much to win this for my sister. Her PC is really slowing down and probably has a lot of extraneous junk in there.
my computer is slower than a snail riding on a slug
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newsletter subscriber
my computer has gradually gotten slower and I would hope this would help it get back to the fast computer it was when I got it last year.
It would help me dump the junk that has attached inself to my files.
my computer is running slow and my scans show that trojans are getting through so i wonder what else is getting through. i sure could use norton pc tuneup
My computer is running slow and sometimes it loses all the internet screens. Then I have to restart the computer in order to access the internet again. Thanks for the chance to win!
Webkinz won’t play on my computer anymore , and my kids are having a fit.
I am a subscriber.
I twittered your contest. name-donnak4
WOW! I would love to have this. My step-daughter is contantly downloading toolbars and other items she shouldn’t be and then it slows down my computer. It seems no matter how much i uninstall i’ve always missed something.
Thanks for the contest!
My computer is running to slow because of spyware.
The registry needs a good cleaning and files
deleted.It just needs some in house cleaning.
Please enter me and thanks for the giveaway
my computer is so slow .if i win this maybe it will help take care of that.:)
I have subscribed through google.Thanks