Spyware, viruses, & security : navapsvc resource hog

navapsvc resource hog

System: XP MCE SP2 / 2.4Ghz Intel Dual Core / ASUS P5N32-SLI Premium / 2GB DDR2 RAM / 2x320GB Barracuda HDDs / eight partitions

Norton Antivirus 2003 / Internet Security 2003 is installed and automatically runs on startup.

I've noticed that even with the PC sitting "idle" and no applications running (confirmed by Task Manager) the navapsvc process consumes a minimum of 22% CPU. This seems excessive for the hardware specification that I have, but of course being what it is I don't want to disable this service.

Interestingly though - as reported in other threads that I've trawled on this subject - I have a manual workaround; if I kill the process via Task Manager and then manually restart it by Right Mouse Button option from the icon in the System Tray, it then only "consumes" 0% CPU apart from when it really, genuinely, has some work to do.

I have spent hours and hours trying to stop this happening, playing with all manner of things on my PC, reading the aforementioned countless web threads, and trying all manner of recommended "solutions" but haven't found the answer.

With Norton AV being such a long established software tool I find this hard to believe; the answer, and the cure (not "don't use Norton bloatware", I hope) must be out there somewhere, and I hope that a reader of this forum may know the answer.

For information, the same software installed on the other PCs (ok, laptops to be precise) on the home network don't exhibit this behaviour, and whilst all running XP Pro SP2 (not XP MCE SP2 like the machine with the problem) they have a lower hardware spec.

Many thanks.