topic Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files in Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus

Norton seems to have deleted all program files

henderrr — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 23:01:31 GMT

I have a three PC copy of NIS 2011 on a CD from amazon. I put it on my 2 PCs with no problem. I tried to install on my girlfriend's laptop (Compaq with Vista Home). The initial download went OK and I started the install. I wasn' watching carefully but I noticed some message about "uninstalling" or similar as the Norton screen disappeared. There was no sign of any Norton install and when investigating further it seems to have deleted all of the contents of the Program Files folder, Program data folder and some other stuff. Vista system restore fails, as the restore files seem to have been deleted or corrupted.

Even the administrative tools have gone! Internet explorer as well. Maybe they're just being hidden/denied or somesuch but I don't think so, as can't find anything when logged in as admin.

Now I guess Norton support will say it was due to some problem with the PC or whatever. I'm not interested in the blame game. I would like to know if Norton can supply an undelete tool or something similar to restore the programs to this PC, or at least propose a recovery path...

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

delphinium — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 23:35:42 GMT

There may well have been an older version of Norton or a conflicting version of some other security program on board that has caused a problem. Norton is not able to uninstall eveything. There may also have been an unknown infection on the machine that corrupted either the download or the installation.

Since it went in without issue on the other machines without issue, there is some other problem with this machine. Try uninstalling it through add/remove if possible, then run the Norton removal tool.

Remove any other security software using their own particular removal tools, and then do a clean installation of Norton.

http://www.symantec.com/symnrt

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

henderrr — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 07:15:43 GMT

Yes I don't disagree that there must have been some issue with the PC. But it shouldn't have been possible to annihilate all the programs in the PC including system restore. There are commercially available recovery tools which might help me restore the files, but I'm reluctant to pay out £40 for a problem which occurred as a result of this failed install of NIS. Surely a firm like symantec has a restore utility they could loan me for a few days to undelete all this stuff? I can't even use remote desktop. It's all gone...

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

huwyngr — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 17:15:47 GMT

henderr,

First things if it's not too lalte --

-- Have you looked in the recycle bin to see what is there and can be restored?

Piriform does have a very good file recovery tool that might be worth trying but any rescue of that sort needs to be done before anything can get overwritten.

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

And there's a portable version that you can run from a thumbdrive:

http://www.piriform.com/recuva/features/portable-version

-- Have you looked in Norton's Quarantine to see what's there and can be restored?

Just a long shot but is it possible that what has been damaged is the UserAccount rather than the files themselves?

Although you say you can't see files when logged on as Administrator I don't see how you could boot up to the Administrator's Account if all the files under Program Files were gone ... there's a Windows Folder there that is needed.

I'm not into the blame game either but rather how to restore to normal.

Windows does have a procedure for creating a new User Account so if you are able to boot up to Windows what happens if you create a new user account with elevated privileges.

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

henderrr — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:47:07 GMT

Hi Hugh

Thanks for suggestions.

Norton had removed all traces of itself including quarantine.

Tried undelete etc. and got a lot of files back but most programs wouldn't run, presumably due to registry issues etc.

So have done clean re-install and re-built PC - the users' data was OK as windows was still runnable before the rebuild.

I guess this reinforces the need to absolutely get rid of all security related software before installing Norton - a reference to McAfee was found lurking in the control panel...

regards

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

AllenM — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:40:39 GMT

henderrr wrote:
Hi Hugh
Thanks for suggestions.
Norton had removed all traces of itself including quarantine.
Tried undelete etc. and got a lot of files back but most programs wouldn't run, presumably due to registry issues etc.
So have done clean re-install and re-built PC - the users' data was OK as windows was still runnable before the rebuild.

I guess this reinforces the need to absolutely get rid of all security related software before installing Norton - a reference to McAfee was found lurking in the control panel...

regards

Hi henderrr,

It is always necessary to uninstall any existing security software and run a removal tool to ensure all remnants of it are removed prior to installing new security software. This is to prevent conflicts between the two and this is necessary no matter what company makes both security software.

However, failure to do so should never cause the kind of dramatic issues you outlined. I feel that something else was going on which caused your issue and not the simple fact of installing Norton while remnants of McAfee were still around.

I would recommend running the following McAfee removal tool before attempting to reinstall Norton. This should be done after a normal uninstall via Control Panel.

http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

When you reinstall Norton, I would recommend that you reinstall from the appropriate link below as it will be more up to date than the CD. Be sure to pick the correct one as the product KEYs for Norton Antivirus and Norton Internet Security are not interchangeable. I didn't see anywhere in the thread where you indicated which one you have. These are the English versions so let us know if you need a different language.

Norton Internet Security: http://www.norton.com/nis11

Norton Antivirus: http://www.norton.com/nav11

You can also check your product key from your Norton Account.

After installation be sure to run Live Update repeatedly (rebooting as requested) until it reports there are no more updates.

On a side note, I would also recommend that you consider purchasing an imaging backup program like Norton Ghost or some other that you prefer. With an image backup (not a file and folder backup) you would always be able to restore your system to its previous state if something went wrong, without having to reinstall Windows and and all of your applications.

Best wishes.
Allen

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

huwyngr — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 15:09:56 GMT

Like Allen I'm bewildered at the possibiltiy that Norton could have done this even if there was fighting with traces of McAfee.

I have heard of Program Files apparently disappearing that turned out to be due to the User Account corruption but to take out as you describe is staggering.

Since you've restored I guess there's no point in seeing if Norton Staff can help investigate it but I'll mention it to them.

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

dickevans — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:59:21 GMT

henderr

One more small point to add to the excellent advice above

PLEASE update your image file from time to time. The update will be a replacement for the image so plan ahead

[soapbox hidden]

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

zappo — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 05:16:12 GMT

hello all, I too have had a taste of this exact problem, yesterday, trying to install NIS 2011 and the same again with 360 V5!

I have a win 7 64bit and I have tried the install both pre and post SP1... The same thing keeps happening, NIS removes my copy of Ghost and also about half of the other prog's in the C:\Program Files (x86) dir, along with parts of the windows control panel apps!!

OMG

I have to restore the PC using ghost after each time I have tried this, now approx 6 times!!

One time I had the tech support guy remote to my PC and have a look, he said "its a windows problem". Thanks.

If I want to waste another whole day on NIS, I may try running the norton "uninstall the uninstall tool" three times as recommend by any good Norton support person and see if I am lucky enough to be honored by a working NIS that does not delete parts of windows itself.

I will now pray to the norton gods.

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

bkennedy — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 18:09:58 GMT

zappo wrote:

hello all, I too have had a taste of this exact problem, yesterday, trying to install NIS 2011 and the same again with 360 V5!

I have a win 7 64bit and I have tried the install both pre and post SP1... The same thing keeps happening, NIS removes my copy of Ghost and also about half of the other prog's in the C:\Program Files (x86) dir, along with parts of the windows control panel apps!!

OMG

I have to restore the PC using ghost after each time I have tried this, now approx 6 times!!

One time I had the tech support guy remote to my PC and have a look, he said "its a windows problem". Thanks.

If I want to waste another whole day on NIS, I may try running the norton "uninstall the uninstall tool" three times as recommend by any good Norton support person and see if I am lucky enough to be honored by a working NIS that does not delete parts of windows itself.

I will now pray to the norton gods.

Zappo,

We will be following up with you via PM on this.

This is a very unusual issue. I can remember only 1 other time I have heard of or seen this and that was with an install that somehow on the users machine got corrupted (could have been threat or just how their system was setup that led to it) and when they uninstalled using an old version of SymNRT it deleted a folder of files on the desktop. The current SymNRT is a bit smarter to protect against this.

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

nickcossey — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:57:47 GMT

Hello All,

I've just experienced the same thing. Installed Norton Internet Security 2011, over Norton 09/10 on Vista and all my program files have been deleted. I had to download Internet Explorer at work just to get here!

Do I now have to reload everything,and then will everything be deleted again if I try to install Norton again?

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

Vineeth — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:41:51 GMT

Did you run the Norton Removal Tool during the install process?

Click Start > All programs > Accessories > Run.

In the Run dialog box, type %temp%, and then click OK.

In the Windows Temp folder, check for an NRT log file. If you are able to locate this, please let me know. I'll help you in uploading it.

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

nickcossey — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 21:09:10 GMT

No I didn't (but wasn't asked to).

I recovered the system back to factory settings as the system restore program had gone.

Anyway I then successfully installed Norton 2011 with no problems this time!

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

cjksmile — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:47:35 GMT

This happened to me last night. I had Internet Security 2010. According to the statuses posted during the installation process for Internet Securty 2011, it successfully uninstalled the 2010 version and then successfully installed 2011. After all the updates were loaded, I went to get on the internet and found that the shortcut didn't work. Looking into this, I found that all of the programs I had installed on my laptop were gone. I tried a system restore to a time before I updated the Norton and it did nothing. Luckily, I have 2 campus departments worth of IT people to help me out. After trying a number of things posted on various help websites and forums (including this one), they finally can to a fix and used my back-up copy of my system as a whole to restore my computer. This experience has made me go from a life-long Norton user to a never-again Norton user.

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

AdvancedSetup — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 22:20:38 GMT

Very strange behavior - almost sounds like one of the rogue applications that hide files.

It may not be the issue here but certainly no harm done in running this unhide program to see if it fixes it. If it doesn't fix it then no harm done aside from a little bit of time lost. If it does fix it though then it would save a lot of time. Just a shot in the dark as this is an odd event.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

ghavioltiger — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:55:16 GMT

The same thing happened to us but in two stages. Help! We bought Norton Internet Security 2011 at Office Depot in person. After uninstalling NIS 2010 and installing 2011, our internet settings were changed and we lost our internet connection. Norton's support walked us through resetting our internet connection to the proper IP address, when we then tried a second time to install NIS 2011 our program files, including Internet Explorer, were deleted and 2011 froze. We spent a long time on the phone with Norton, first to be told we simply needed to pay them $100 to remove a virus. The Norton virus removal person told us our programs were gone and there was nothing they could do to help us. Has anyone found a way to undo what appears to be a Norton uninstall of the original programs (IE and others; Windows 7 appears to still be there).

Re: Norton seems to have deleted all program files

ghavioltiger — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 01:08:07 GMT

I forgot to mention that in addition to the 4 people complaining about this problem on this string, I found two other strings earlier this year on this forum reporting the same problem (with no resolution reported).