A "How-To" on Manually Updating the Norton Recovery Tool

If you've recently purchased one of the 2009 Norton products, you may have noticed that this year, it came with something new - the Norton Recovery Tool.

To avoid confusion between the Norton Removal Tool (NRT) and the Norton Recovery Tool, I will instead refer to the solution as the Norton Recovery Disc (NRD).

For many of our users, this tool will never play a part in their security software experience, but for those who need it, it can be a life saver.

So what is the Norton Recovery Disc, and when would you ever need to use it?

The NRD is a bootable CD that can run scans and remove threats from outside of your Windows operating system. Sometimes systems become so infected with malware that they can't start up to a point where installing security software is even possible. The NRD is essential when a system is heavily infected and the installation of the Norton security product fails.

I recently wrote an in-depth guide on how users can manually update the NRD with drivers and updated definitions. This should come in handy when your network card or storage drivers are not supported by the default NRD image, or you want to scan with the latest definitions without downloading them every time.

You can download the guide from here.

And the accompanying script from here.

Has the Norton Recovery Disk helped you? I'd be interested in hearing your stories so please leave a comment in the section below.

 


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Message Edited by Sondra_Magness on 10-24-2008 12:41 PM
Message Edited by PieterV on 10-24-2008 01:04 PM

I haven't got it to work. In the pdf it says not download the v5i32 defintions package but it is the only one available at the provided link.

I'm also getting an: 'imagex.exe' is not recognised (See snapshot1). Is it because of the v5i32 package?

.

I upgraded to 2009 and can not find any reference to the recovery toool whatsoever. Where is it?

Hi mijcar, the ability to boot from a USB key is hardware dependent, but most relatively new systems should support this.

There is no need for floppy emulation or anything like that, the USB key just needs to be seen by the BIOS as an external USB hard drive, and you need to be able to instruct the BIOS to boot from this drive.

The extra step required for XP is to obtain robocopy, and the steps you can skip for XP are the “run as administrator” Vista UAC specific steps.

If you have specific hardware configuration related USB key boot problems, or specific steps in the guide you are having trouble with, please post the details in the community forum, and myself, or a community member with a system similar to yours can provide assistance.
http://community.norton.com/norton/board/message?board.id=nis_feedback&thread.id=15023

Hi Dch48, sorry I wasn’t clear, the email with the download links I mentioned only applies to new purchases, i.e. the purchase confirmation email.

The direct download links are provided on page 1 of the PDF guide.

I am interested in getting the updates (antivirus/antispyware etc.) but after reading the guide, it seems like you have to put the updates on your pc BEFORE booting from the Recovery Disc.

Is there any method for the Recovery Disc software to accept an updated anti-malware file from USB DRIVE after booting? That would be more logical in a failed environment.

After "pause" it gives snapshot2.snapshot2.jpg

Thanks for your “How to” when there are a needs to alter drivers to fit a specific configuration.
I have used NSR ver. 1.0 and Intel Matrix Storage Manager since 2006 and by that knew what cause of a not functioning NIS 2009 -NRT was.

I haven’t tried anything else yet, but I can tell you that your directions for making a bootable USB key do not work. I imagine the problem is in how the computer perceives the USB key (large floppy or extra harddrive). Whatever the reason, I am concerned that something else vital may have been missed in the other instructions, which are greatly more complicated. The biggest complaint I have is you do not distinguish between XP and Vista except occasionally. I have XP and have absolutely no idea which pieces of your instructions pertain to my system. I think you need to make another run at this with XP specific instructions instead of expecting us to extract meaning from the Vista instructions.

Hi Pieter,

Very nice to read about future functionalities.
The Norton Recovery tool will be more and more needed
when the complexity of the operating systems and security softwares increases.
This tool will at that moment be the only way to restart a highly infected system.

Hi Kurt, you are correct, NSR will have similar problems.
In future versions of the product we want to provide functionality similar, but even friendlier, to the WinPE customization wizards found in the Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.5, Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 8, and Norton Ghost 14 products.

Pieter the script is trying to copy the whole contents of drive D (even system volume information and recycle bin) What might my fault.

Well the norton disc is a boot scanner of sorts and this has been their since the 2007 version but the prob is the updates i mean how do i make sure the scan happens with the current updates i have and not with the updates that came with the Disc

 

Hi Pieter - For reference,  I was unable to utilize the stock NRT cdrom because the virus definition update failed.  I suspect it may have been due to the FTP proxy we have in place on our business network.  I’m in the process of loading the virus definitions as you instructed but wanted to let you know of my initial problem using the stock NRT image.  I’m looking forward to using your solution!

I'm getting an error about copying the kor_boot.ttf (korean text font?) which I don't think is even necessary.  I'm guessing that file is incomplete or corrupt?  Anyone have any suggestions?

 

 

 

Error1.png

Hello, did anyone help Mitka with the virus definition update? as I am having the same problem; the script pause at the exact place and giving me the same error message. Seems to me the syntax somewhere in the script, regarding the extraction of the definitions is wrong somehow. This is regards to Norton Recovery Disk or Norton Recovery Tool. Thank You any and info is Greatly Aprreciated…

Sry, i forgot snapshot1.

Thanks,

Mitka

snapshot1.jpg

Dear Pieter Viljoen,

 

I tried to access the documents, but I receive the following message:

Cannot Access Attachment.

 

You do not have sufficient rights to access the attachment.
Is there another way to access the files?, I need to include the RAID drivers to scan my machine and your documents would be very useful.
cheers

Having the same issue as Bilksinir where I don't have sufficient rights to access file. Unfortunately, I am at a very critical stage where need them NOW though. But here is the problem. My computer will not start due to missing driver for hard drive! If I have the original Toshiba recovery disks with drivers, is there any way to extract them from those disks on another computer and custom install on the tool that I have already created (minus the drivers, since at the time it was very unclear from the Norton instructions whether it already INCLUDED necessary drivers or whether the additional drivers you could add were some sort of custom drivers - it would be EXTREMELY intelligent if the tool that is supposed to help you had clear, concise instructions regarding the drivers and a wizard to extract them for those less computer savvy, such as myself!), perhaps in DOS? I would TRULY appreciate as much help as you can give me on this, as I am overwhelmingly in need! Also, the more in lay mans terms the better (for me, at least)! Btw, the scan came out fine, with no infections whatsoever, and it scanned over 628,000 files so my data is still intact, just missing the access to it, correct?