Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus

[algreary]

Hi, I run on windows 7 64 bit. I have had NIS for a couple of years and my problems started yesterday morning when i clicked on a button that I have been ignoring for quite some time about upgrading my NIS as it was covered by my current subscription.

After "successful" installation my tray icon went from a green tick to a grey tick and I was unable to open the command hub or get any of the right mouse click options up.

I was busy so went  to work but today decided i had the time to do the clean install I thought I needed. First I uninstalled twice with nortons removal tool, cleaned my registry with CCleaner and reinstalled 2012 through the offline installation exe. With the results being exactly what I started with.

I then tried the above but using the 2011 offline installation exe, with the worse result of no tray icon whatsoever after my "successful" installation and an unable to find uiStub.exe error from the desktop icon.

I then moved onto uninstalling NIS using either CCleaner or absolute uninstaller before running nortons removal tool and then reinstalling each of the programs... twice. With exaclty the same results as above.

I then those uninstalling steps plus searched my registry for all references to nortons and then deleting them, before trying the two installation exe's again. With no difference in the result.

I then did the above stuff again but instead tried to install online from my online account (NIS 2012) with the same grey tickbox and unresponsive right mouse, left mouse or desktop shortcut.

No error messages, just a lot of nothing.

The only thing I can think of is that i don't use default installation folders (I use a seperate partition from my OS). But I had my last installation working perfectly for at least a year in a non-default folder.

But perhaps I have re-installed to a different folder and some random remaining registy entry still exists that points to my old folders. Although I have ran Ccleaner registry cleaner many, many times today which should have deleted entries that point to folders that don't exist.

So if anyone has any ideas please let me know with thanks, I enjoy many of NIS features want it to work.

I run a laptop also with windows 7, 64 bit. And I'll just keep on delaying when i see that button appear.

While I wait I will of course do all of the above, plus install 2012 into the default folders.

Thanks in advance.

[huwyngr Norton Fighter]

Al,

<< The only thing I can think of is that i don't use default installation folders (I use a seperate partition from my OS). But I had my last installation working perfectly for at least a year in a non-default folder. >>

I think you may have hit on it there. I'm not positive about this but I think Norton does need to be in the same partition as the OS so hang on for some advice from those who know more about this.

Was the previous non-default folder on the same partition/logical drive as the OS?

[algreary]

Well I uninstalled, ran the removal tool 3 times with restarts between. Checked and deleted references to nortons and ccSvcHst.exe in the registry and deleted them. Ran the offline installation file v 19.5.1.2 into the default file after ensuring that the systems default installation folders were C:\\Program Files and C:\\Program Files (x86).

My new install still has the grey circle on my Norton's tray icon, and nothing visible happens when clicking (either button) on the tray icon or the shortcut link.  I've reconnected to the internet to see if NIS will update itself in the background but while running a internet metre and watching CPU usage, neither metres show any action.

On restart looking in my taskmanager I have 2 episodes of ccSvcHst.exe*32 running and no uiStub.exe. When I push on my desktop shortcut the process uiStub.exe appeared on my processes list for about 30secs before dissapearing but I was still unable to use my tray icon or have a NIS hub appear on my screen.

Any second or third push on my desktop shortcut has uiStub appear for a second before dissapearing.

Don't know if any of this helps but, if someone has an even half a sensible explanation and idea for me to try I'm willing to listen. Speaking of which, thanks for trying Hugh.

Because I've already deleted my registry edits I can't check to see if I had any of Nortons on a seperate partition when it was working perfectly. During my registry delete I found a lot of norton references pointing to D:\ but that could be from one of the above installations, I have no way of now looking. (The only things I run on C:\ are the things that won't run on D:\ and perhaps two years ago I found out that Norton's doesn't, so there is a good chance it was running on C:\)?

(Please noone suggest a clean install of windows - that I won't do.)

Thanks in advance again.

[Tech83 Super Phishing Phryer]

Hi! Algreary,

Is your Windows 7 account an Administrator account or a Standard account?  If it's an Administrator account Click Start>Type CMD in the search box>Right Click on CMD then select Run as Administrator>Select at the resulting prompt>In the new windows type SFC /Scannow>Press Enter.  After the process completes restart the computer & log back in. *Before doing the above procedure please make sure that your Norton product is not installed.  Once back into Windows 7 got where your Norton product installation files are stored and right-click on the installer file then select Run as Administrator>Select Yes at the resulting prompt.

Please let me know if this does or does not work.

Tech83  :)

[algreary]

I"ve just done as above, and the SFC did find corrupt files and reported a fix. (I always run as administrator with full ownership, but still pushed the run as administrator options on both the cmd and the NIS installer just in case). - All with the same effect - Nothing!!

In the meantime I have realised that is is not a NIS issue, I tried to install comodo firewall as a temporary replacement while I sorted out NIS and I recieved a fatal error:1603. That then reminded me that the last program I installed (commoncents) also did absolutely nothing except give me permission errors, "unable to create .lnk files" or somesuch and I had to uninstall it after 3 goes at installing it failed.

The coincidence is too high, so it's not NIS.

I have since made windows installer automatic and ensured it was on prior to trying to install anything.

I have disabled all but essential services on start-up.

I have re-ran a regedit I installed years ago to take full ownership of the windows folder and the program folders.

All with no luck.

thinking about all relatively recent system changes:

I have made recent driver upgrades, the most notible would be gigabyte raid controller. I run Raid 1, but also my network and display drivers.

I have also installed small programs that run just fine eg. teamspeak3, sharpkeys, autohotkeys, absolute uninstaller (which i installed to make sure I was getting rid of commoncents correctly) and Eric's movie base.

I also just installed malewarebytes to my program partition (d:) successfully and it is running fine. The 3 programs that haven't worked have all tried to install at least partially onto C: drive, so somewhere in there is my error.

So if anyone would like point me to something I can try, please do, but seeing as it's not a NIS issue I will start thinking about moving my problem to another forum, (or doing the dredded windows reinstall.)

Thanks again guys.

[peterweb Worm Eliminator]

This may be an infection that is preventing installation of a security program.

Is your Malwarebytes the FREEversion or the Pro? If it is the pro, that could be interfering with Norton.

As you have Malwarebytes installed, try running a full system scan in Safe Mode.

[algreary]

Hi,

Malwarebytes wouldn't be the problem as I only installed it to see if I could, after all my other install failures.

But I ran it in safe mode, full scan, and nothing was detected.

I then ran the microsoft fix.it tool for installation problems and it didn't fix anything.

I feel I am either looking at a registry corruption (perhaps that I caused) or a permissions problem.

New information: my idle scan from NIS is running in the background apparently? So despite the grey dot, perhaps NIS is installed.

Would anyone have any idea which folders are involved if NIS is acutally installed and working, but the control centre can't be displayed? Is it installed in the user folders rather than program files?

Ta.

[peterweb Worm Eliminator]

I know you have tried many things, but try clicking on Support - Get Support to run  Autofix to check your installation and fix what it finds.

Also, as Norton does seem to be installed, make sure it is only the FREE version of Malwarebytes that is installed. The Pro version has resident scanning that will conflict with Norton.

[Tech83 Super Phishing Phryer]

---

algreary wrote:

I"ve just done as above, and the SFC did find corrupt files and reported a fix. (I always run as administrator with full ownership, but still pushed the run as administrator options on both the cmd and the NIS installer just in case). - All with the same effect - Nothing!!

In the meantime I have realised that is is not a NIS issue, I tried to install comodo firewall as a temporary replacement while I sorted out NIS and I recieved a fatal error:1603. That then reminded me that the last program I installed (commoncents) also did absolutely nothing except give me permission errors, "unable to create .lnk files" or somesuch and I had to uninstall it after 3 goes at installing it failed.

The coincidence is too high, so it's not NIS.

I have since made windows installer automatic and ensured it was on prior to trying to install anything.

I have disabled all but essential services on start-up.

I have re-ran a regedit I installed years ago to take full ownership of the windows folder and the program folders.

All with no luck.

thinking about all relatively recent system changes:

I have made recent driver upgrades, the most notible would be gigabyte raid controller. I run Raid 1, but also my network and display drivers.

I have also installed small programs that run just fine eg. teamspeak3, sharpkeys, autohotkeys, absolute uninstaller (which i installed to make sure I was getting rid of commoncents correctly) and Eric's movie base.

I also just installed malewarebytes to my program partition (d:) successfully and it is running fine. The 3 programs that haven't worked have all tried to install at least partially onto C: drive, so somewhere in there is my error.

So if anyone would like point me to something I can try, please do, but seeing as it's not a NIS issue I will start thinking about moving my problem to another forum, (or doing the dredded windows reinstall.)

Thanks again guys.

---

Hi! Algreary,

Please re-run the SFC /Scannow procedure listed previously to confirm that all corrupt or damaged files are repaired/replaced.  Once the process completes go ahead and type in the command CHKDSK /R (this will run Check Disk) then press Enter.  At the resulting question type Y then press Enter.  Type in Exit then Press Enter again to close the command prompt window. Restart your computer and let Check Disk run an take note of any errors that get corrected in the first four stages; depending upon how large your hard drive is it may take up to an hour or more for stage five to complete. Please let us know if any errors were found & corrected an what they were.

Tech83  :)

[algreary]

Thanks for continuing to try guys.

Peterweb: It is Malwarebytes free (and I'm sure of that), but as I said malwarebytes was installed well after i experienced these problems. I only installed it after trying a lot of other things just to see if I could install a program to another partition and see if I have any registry / running problems from a new program installation on another partition. I could, and it didn't.

I can't access the support tab, or any other tab as I can't get to the control centre or hub.

But thanks anyway.

Tech83:

SFC the second time reported no error.

chkdsk c:/r reported -

Stage 1

0 bad files, 0 EA records

38 reparse records processed

Stage 2

0 unindexed files scanned or recovered

Stage 3

(after processing a large number of SDs/SIDS files, data files and USN bytes)

USN Journal verification complete (it didn't list any problems or concerns)

Stage 4

(went too quickly but i didn''t see any error reported, just how many files scanned)

Final message on restart : drive is clean

My next step is to now install and uninstall a small program to different folders of C: and see if there is one folder that stops the installation or gives me a corrupted program.

I'll let you know how I go, and I'll keep an eye out on this page for any other ideas.

Thanks