do not surf the internet or play online games without a firewall or antivirus program
You haven't said much about your system, (in fact you have said nothing), so we can't diagnose the problem. EG a system with only 32MB of Ram may struggle with Norton's System Works, "and" playing online games, but a system with 1GB of RAM should not struggle.
A 233Mhz Processor might run at 100% capacity all the time where a 3.0Ghz Processor should not, especially with plenty of RAM, although many graphic intensive games will make it work hard.
Many people like Nortons, but many people prefer other solutions, eg separate programs for anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, anti-adware, etc. It's a matter of personal choice.
If IE is showing up as using 99% of CPU usage when you are playing online games through IE, then that is not Nortons but most likely the game itself.
Mark
I have been looking around and i have seen that norton does use a lot of resorces, or ram and i was wondering if there is a way to get rid of some of the processes that it runs. I got the System works 2004 if this needs to be known. And i think this has been messing with my comp, because i will be playing a online game, and i would look at my Task Manager and it would show 100% CPU Usage. And it would show iexplorer 99. It doesn't effect my ram but is nortan firewall running somting that is making explorer use all of my cpu? or could i be spyware or somehting totally different? if you have the same problem and you know how to fix it please tell me, its really starting to tick me off..... Well thanks

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic