Hello Community, I am hoping to find much needed help here.
Here is the problem >
My laptop was running Perfectly Fine before I upgraded Norton! Two things happened immediately upon the upgrade installation of Norton:
1) Upon upgrading my yearly renewal of Norton Security from a purchased Norton disk onto my Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop (Windows XP SP3) - all of my computer programs (Photoshop CS3, Firefox browser, etc) and all desktop icons went missing (corrupt). When clicking onto a corrupted icon I get a Windows Installer pop-up saying it is searching for (example: photoshop.exe) or I could click the Browse button and locate it myself. However, all the .exe files are missing.
2) Also, when right clicking on a file to open it - I get the "Windows Installer" icon popping up. The pop-up says I am missing "AcroPro.msi". So, where did this go now?
I know all of my Adobe and other programs are still someplace on my laptop because checking the C Drive Properties from my desktop - I can see the space that is used up by these programs.
However, I have tried doing numerous searches on my C Drive, but cannot locate any of my program files.
I have also tried to reinstall Adobe Photoshop, but my computer will not let me reinstall anything. I get error messages.
I have tried using the Unhide.exe program - to no avail. Did not unhide my missing desktop icons or program .exe files.
Is there anyone out there that could kindly help me resolve these two issues? I would be forever grateful!
Hi KatherineP and welcome to the community,
Before any further help, please uninstall Norton via " Add or remove programs" and then try to perform a System Restore so your pc will try to revert to a previous state before installation of NIS.
Hope that the process will complete successfully, then we can see what's going on.
Let us know the results,
Regards,
Yes, sorry I forgot to mention that I did do a system restore at the time. It did not work.
Are there any other suggestions I may try?
Hi,
Open a command prompt with an admin rights account then type: sfc /scannow ( note the space between c and /).
Does the scan find any corrupted files or not?
Let us know...
Okay, I did the scan as requested and Norton Autofix did not find any issues. However, during the scan I had about four Windows File Protection pop-ups that said: files that are required for Windows to run properly must be copied to the DLL Cache. Insert your Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack3 CD Now.
The pop-up options were to either "Retry, More Information or Cancel". I chose "Cancel" to let the scan complete.
Now what should I do? I
Hi again,
OK, looks like the OS is heavily damaged.
You have 2 choises in my opinion.
Either you reinstall Windows from scratch, which is the safest way with 100% results or you can try to repair the damaged files, which can be a tedious and time consuming task, more than a reinstall, and you cannot be sure that it will work at 100%.
Also, in order to avoid further problems in the future, please tell us which version of NIS you had, how you did the upgrade etc, so we can determine what went wrong with the installation and damager the OS.
Thanks.
Hope this helps,
Regards,
Hi again too...and, thank you for your help!
If I choose to do a complete Windows install - how do I go about doing this?
How can I avoid losing all my installed programs and downloads? Specifically Adobe, which I can reinstall some from disks, but I will lose my plugins, fonts, styles, ect.
BTW, I upgraded Norton Internet Security V 19.9.1.14 from a disk purchased at my local Costco store. How can my computer be working just fine prior to Norton upgrade and then immediately afterwards... this mess?
My preference would be not to do a complete Windows restore as I do not want to lose everything. Would you be able to explain the work around method to restore my damaged files?
I thank you in advance for your help!
Hi,
If you choose to reinstall the OS, you must first backup your data, files images, music etc on an external HD or if your pc has a second internal HD you can backup your files there.
Unfortunately if you do not have a software like Acronis and already made a system image prior to the problem then you will lose all programs as a complete reinstall erases everything.
If you have an OEM version of Windows you could do a factory reset either from an utility located in your pc or if your pc came with an installation disk(s) you could insert the CD(s) into your pc's CD drive and boot from there.
The second option than you describe is difficult and it requires some already created repair disks (CD).
Normally, when you run the sfc /scannow command, Windows try to repair everything that is corrupted, if you got some warnings during the scan that means that Windows cannot repair those files.
Also, I;m not sure that this can be done with XP but it certainly can be done with W7 or W8.
You have also the possibility to open a case with Microsoft support in your country, but I'm afraid that a fee is required
Please wait a while in order to to gather some responses from other members too before you decide.