Spyware, viruses, & security : Virus posing as anti-virus utility:

Virus posing as anti-virus utility:

I purchased my Sony laptop with 104GB hard drive in Oct.06 which came pre-loaded with Norton anti virus free for 6o days, I decided to up-grade to Norton 07 after the trial version, since it seemed to be recommended since it was pre installed. Flash forward to Aug. last year after moderate usage and I get a warning that my hard drive is full, knowing that it should not be I decide to back up all my files and pictures since I think I have caught a virus. The total of my back-up I could fit on 1DVD and 1CD so what happened to all my space? I called Sony and their response was to do a total restore but they could not give me a definite answer if this would happen again, not the answer I was looking for, there has to be a reason for this! Thinking a virus had slipped by Norton 07; when they advised me to upgrade to Norton 360; I did it. That was a mistake since the program would not update, I spent 13 hours with the tech support trying to resolve this, finally got it working then it would not stop and kept telling me to restart for the updates to take effect every day. Finally I had enough and downloaded the uninstall tool from Norton and got rid of it.
Prior to this my chkdisc would not run, after uninstall it ran the next time I started my computer; Norton must have been stopping it. It found 16 errors and tried to correct them. Also when I defragmented my hard drive there were 16 or more volumes of files it could not defragment, when you add all these up they totalled more than my hard drive. These had the file name starting with symclogs, also I found a folder on C drive with all these files in it and it was huge. I called Sony and asked them what that file means since I am not computer savy and they told me it was a symantic file. I did a search of symclogs and found other people had this problem and found a solution from a gardening web forum in UK. Stated as follows; start the computer in safe mode and delete this folder with all it's contents, it is too big to fit in the recycling bin so you are asked if you want to permantly delete it, I said yes and it took almost 20 min. to complete. After this I checked the amount of space available on my drive it is 98% free. I ran chkdisc and found no errors and de-fragmented the drive and the volumes which showed up before are gone.
In my opinion the problem is Norton hi-jacking my computer,(and to think I paid for that)with all these symclog files, why they allow this to happen to the average user is beyond me. No more Norton for me, it truly is buyer beware!