Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus

[markfr]

Made sure that Norton Utilities 15 had no updates. NIS 2012 (ver 19.7) had no updates.

Ran an Analyse and Compact of the Registry from NU 15. It "said" it was creating a Restore Point. Re-booted. RED X over System Tray Norton Internet Security icon. Open NIS. Says that "Network and Web protections are at risk." Ran Fix. Not fixed. Went to settings. Turned on Intrusion Prevention. Apply. Turns off. Tried to find a restore point. Nothing for today. Went to NU 15. Went to Recover and Restore. Clicked on two items from today (only two). Clicked on Restore. NOTHING happened! Tried Re-boot. Still problem with Intrusion Prevention.

Do I have to run an Uninstall/Reinstall AGAIN??  Just did it a  few weeks ago, because my NIS wasn't able to update from ver 19.6 to 19.7.

Tried MULTIPLE manual Liveupdates.

[twixt Regular Contributor]

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markfr wrote:

Made sure that Norton Utilities 15 had no updates. NIS 2012 (ver 19.7) had no updates.

Ran an Analyse and Compact of the Registry from NU 15. It "said" it was creating a Restore Point. Re-booted. RED X over System Tray Norton Internet Security icon. Open NIS. Says that "Network and Web protections are at risk." Ran Fix. Not fixed. Went to settings. Turned on Intrusion Prevention. Apply. Turns off. Tried to find a restore point. Nothing for today. Went to NU 15. Went to Recover and Restore. Clicked on two items from today (only two). Clicked on Restore. NOTHING happened! Tried Re-boot. Still problem with Intrusion Prevention.

Do I have to run an Uninstall/Reinstall AGAIN??  Just did it a  few weeks ago, because my NIS wasn't able to update from ver 19.6 to 19.7.

Tried MULTIPLE manual Liveupdates.

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Hi, markfr.  Things to try:

1. Go into Device Manager and remove your Network drivers.  Shut down and reboot.  Your network drivers will be automatically redetected on startup - and the connection between NIS and your network drivers will be rebuilt.   Once that connection is properly re-established - and nothing else interferes with the process - the green checkmark in NIS will reappear.

2. If the procedure in Item 1 does not solve your problem, check for updates to your network drivers.  Remove the old network drivers and update.  NIS will reinstall its connection to the new network drivers - and this may solve your problem.

3. Do you use VPN software?  If so, this software has been known to interfere with NIS when there are bugs in the VPN software that prevent both the VPN drivers and the NIS drivers from "chaining" properly.  Removing the VPN software, then removing and reinstalling the network drivers, and then reinstalling the VPN software - allows NIS to "chain" properly again and NIS then starts to work correctly.

Note: Adding updated VPN software after NIS is working properly may be required for the VPN driver to "chain" correctly with NIS.  If so, this will be the "magic bullet" - and everything will then straighten out and start to fly right again.

FYI - I am not guaranteeing the above will solve your problem.  I'm saying that I have run into the exact situation described above - and the procedure detailed above fixed things up quite nicely.

Furthermore, the VPN software company did eventually admit this was their foulup - but that admission only occurred after the fix for the problem was discovered and disseminated through newsgroups and forums for several weeks before the VPN software company got around to acknowledging the issue.

Also, I recommend you report this issue to Symantec in the "Other Software" forum (where NU is discussed) - so that Symantec has an opportunity to update NU so it does not mistakenly remove a Registry entry that is critical to the health of something that is required for NIS to "chain" correctly.  This may or may not be a NU problem - but it doesn't hurt to get Symantec to check to see if they are doing something with NU that they shouldn't.  If NU is the headache - a Live-Update for NU will fix the error - that's what Live Update is for.

Hope this helps.

[huwyngr Norton Fighter]

Mark,

Thanks for posting the damage that can be done if you mess with the registry, or let robots do so. I doubt that you would have seen any improvement in performance even it the system had not crashed afterwards.

My policy is to avoid messing with the registry unless something is visibly wrong that I have good reason to believe is due to something in the registry and then I look for something very specific to do and don't use the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner!

Anyway -- I hope you get it sorted out quickly.

[markfr]

I will try the Nic driver re-do. Hmmm.. Maybe if I look for updates for it, would do the same.

No VPN.

Thanks

[markfr]

I have done Norton Utils Compact Registry before (with older NIS version). No problem. Have used CCleaner, which also does things with the Registry. This has often, either done, nothing much, or Fixed a problem.

One thing though.. I tried to use System Restore, to go back before the Compact. It looked like it was being done. Pc re-booted, then came up with  Can NOT Restore to <whatever the date was>.  Tried it for an earlier date. Same.

[yank Trojan Terminator]

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markfr wrote:

I have done Norton Utils Compact Registry before (with older NIS version). No problem. Have used CCleaner, which also does things with the Registry. This has often, either done, nothing much, or Fixed a problem.

One thing though.. I tried to use System Restore, to go back before the Compact. It looked like it was being done. Pc re-booted, then came up with  Can NOT Restore to <whatever the date was>.  Tried it for an earlier date. Same.

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Hi markfr,

Is NIS stil running correctly now?  You mentioned System Restore.  System Restore can mess up NIS big time as it deletes (when it rolls back) certain updates, and can casue a corrupt install.  This usually requires a through cleaning of the old NIS install and a clean. 

FWIW, you must disable Tamper Protection in order to be able to have a System Restore complete.  Norton will not let Windows make any changes with Tamper Protection enabled.   Settings > General > Product Security > Norton Product Tamper Protection.

[huwyngr Norton Fighter]

Markfr,

I do use CCleaner myself but it fits my "specification" in that it lists everything it thinks needs dealing with and makes you check what you want done. Plus IIRC it backs up the Registry before making any changes.

I don't know the one in Norton Utilities but the only time I used the one in N360 -- on my machine which is dual booting -- it rectified what it thought was a missing file reference in the registry by linking to a file that actually belonged to the other operating system; from Windows 7 to XP ...... on a different physical hard drive even!

[markfr]

Hmm.. The solution #1, kind-of worked. I didn't do an Uninstall. Instead, I went to Re-do the Nic driver. Found my Dell drivers folder, which had the NIC driver. Went to install it. I got a BLUE SCREEN crash. After a re-boot, NIS 2012 was "complete" again. No errors. Intrusion Prevention was on, and stayed on. No Red X on the NIS icon. Now a Green check-mark again. Wonder what happened... While the problem was there, I Still had Internet access. In other words, my Network card was still working.

[twixt Regular Contributor · Accepted solution]

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markfr wrote:
Hmm.. The solution #1, kind-of worked. I didn't do an Uninstall. Instead, I went to Re-do the Nic driver. Found my Dell drivers folder, which had the NIC driver. Went to install it. I got a BLUE SCREEN crash. After a re-boot, NIS 2012 was "complete" again. No errors. Intrusion Prevention was on, and stayed on. No Red X on the NIS icon. Now a Green check-mark again. Wonder what happened... While the problem was there, I Still had Internet access. In other words, my Network card was still working.

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Hi, markfr.

Under normal circumstances, when NIS is installed and in operation, there are three parts to a Network Driver installation.

1. The first component is the Network Driver itself.  If this is operational, you will have network access even if NIS is not part of the Device Driver "chain".

2. The second component is the  Packet Scheduler Miniport.  This is required to support Quality of Service capability.  If your network driver supports QOS and you have that enabled in your Network Driver configuration - the Packet Scheduler Miniport will be present.  If your network driver does not support QOS - there will be no Packet Scheduler Miniport.  The presence or absence of this item does not affect the operation of NIS.

3. The third component (and the important part in your situation) is the Symantec  Network Security Miniport.  This piece allows NIS to "sniff" the network packet stream for nasties.  This component is only present and active when NIS is installed.

Note: If that third component is corrupt but the Network Driver itself (Item 1) is still functional - NIS will notice it can no longer check the packet stream for nasties - and NIS will show a red x.  This is quite correct.  You do not want NIS thinking everything is OK when it is unable to properly "sniff" the packet stream - because having a valid "sniffer" in place is part of the multiple layers of protection NIS uses to protect you from malware.

When you reinstalled the NIC drivers, you forced a removal of the existing NIC drivers as part of the reinstall.  This forced NIS to rebuild the device driver "chain" - and NIS installed a new copy of the Symantec Network Security Miniport.  With this in place, the network data was properly able to stream from the Network Driver, through the Security Miniport to Windows and vice versa.  Once the "chain" was re-established, NIS noticed it was "back in the loop" - thus the red x changed back to a green checkmark.  Porblem solved. 

The bluescreen error occurred as part of the reinstall of the Network Drivers - when the old network drivers were removed but the new network drivers were not yet reinstalled.  What happened there is Windows detected it would be unstable with the old drivers removed - and a "Protection Fault" was generated to prevent file corruption from occurring due to the instability.  In your particular circumstances, this was normal and correct operation for Windows.  "Protection Fault" capability is specifically engineered into Windows to prevent Windows from continuing to operate when it is unsafe for Windows to do so.  When Windows detects a problem it cannot fix "on the fly" - you get a bluescreen error so there is an obvious indication that something went wrong, went wrong, went wrong...

Under normal circumstances, Windows is quite capable of having its Network Drivers removed/reinstalled on the fly.  However, in your case, the corruption in the Symantec Network Security Miniport prevented Windows from running stably once all three (or two) of the Network Driver components were removed.  The restart allowed Windows to recover from that problem and return to correct operation.  Thus, the restart was all that was required to "fix" the instability caused by the removal of the corrupted Symantec Network Security Miniport.

Thus, when Windows restarted, Plug'-n-Play reinstalled the Network Drivers, NIS detected the new Network Driver installation and created a new instance of the Symantec Network Security Miniport - with all the proper linkages to allow NIS to "sniff" the packet stream.  NIS then found it was "back in the loop" - so the red x was replaced with the green checkmark.

You did exactly as described in Item 1 - you just used a different way to force the removal/reinstall process.

Hope this helps your understanding.