System restore and search problem.

[Headkutter]

Hi!

Im having a major problem with my laptop at the moment, it has windows XP home edition on it and recently had to remove my norton antivirus because it kept saying that the livereg. couldnt update with new virus definitions (or something along that line) So i went to Add or Remove programs and tried to remove norton antivirus. half way through the removing everything froze and my laptop shutdown. when i restarted it it said that the antivirus was still on the laptop but when i clicked into it it wouldnt work so i went to:-

Start>Search and typed in norton antivirus and it gave me all the files that the antivirus was in so i went round and deleted it all. a few days later i did a system restore back to before i removed the antivirus.

System restore went through as normal and restarted windows but before any of the icons appeared it seemed to freeze so i left it for about 10minutes to see if it would continue to reboot itself but never did so i had to shutdown the laptop by pressing and holding the on button. after this i tried to go into system restore again but it doesnt come up i click on it and a white box appears with system restore in the blue line across the top and nothing else happens.

Also when i click on it the search box it appears as normal i.e the tabs appear and the little search buddy but the box to type what your searching for doesnt appear. and also when i click my internet explorer it says your browser does not appear to have javascript enabled.

I followed all the instructions to enable it but it keeps coming up also, when i go into my yahoo email and i click on delete to delete a mesage i have read nothing happens.

Could all this be because i have a virus or coz i dont have the antivirus anymore?

Ooh and one last thing when i go into my add and remove programs i still have Norton WMI update but if i click to remove it, a box comes up with

windows installer

the feature that you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable

Click OK to try again or enter an alternate path to a foldewr containing the installation package 'SYMWM104.MSI' in the box below

User source

C:\DOCUME~1\ALLUSE~1\APPLIC~1\Symantec\LIVEUP~1\DOWNLO~1\EXITEM~3.1_E\SYMWM104.MSI

Thing is i dont have the disk anymore to try and load norton antivirus again and try to remove it again properly.

HELLLLLLP its stressing me out!

[cluberti]

Since most antivirus packages (Symantec/Norton A/V included) use Explorer shell extensions, and since you're using Explorer to search, and because your A/V uninstall was botched, I'd say that the search and explorer issues are related to the A/V uninstall. You'll probably have to call Symantec to get it resolved (they usually have manual removal instructions for just such an occasion).

[mcallisb]

I've found Norton to be a headache while using and trying to unistall. I suspect that since the uninstall went badly and that you tried to manually remove it by deleting the leftover files you may have accidently deleted something you shouldn't have. Personally, in this case I would probably repair windows so that you get your system functionality back.

I disagree with cluberti about contacting Symantic since you did try and manually remove the files (I think it would have been a good suggestion if you hadn't done it). If after you repair windows and you get all of your functionality back I would recommend trying to find another Norton disk and reinstalling it then trying to uninstall it again. If this isn't possible I'd try to remove all the registry entries (which you should be able to find online) that point to Norton and disable all the services that may not have been removed (i.e. msconfig startups + in services) . The problem with this method is that you'll always have little bits of Norton kicking around.

To address your concern that this occured because of a virus or not having A/V software. As I said above it seems highly likely that you may have caused damage to your OS either by a faulty uninstall or the deleting afterwards. If you are concerned about not having A/V software you might try Avast! which has a free home edition and I find that it runs fairly well.

Good Luck.

[Headkutter]

Hi guys,

Finally decided to try and get another A/V disk.After trying to install it and it failing it sent me to the symantec corp. website and allowed me to download a fix that completely removed all known traces of NAV throughout my entire system.

as mcallisb said i may have deleted something i shouldnt have, but luckily enough the fix did exactly what it said on the tin and fixed it. my system is working perfect now, and i managed to reinstall a new internet security system.

Thanx for the help guys!

[cluberti]

Cool - never use a Symatec suite again - SAV is fine (within reason), but the rest of their products save Symantec Ghost are utter crap.