I hope somebody has a better solution to this than falling back to my last full backup.
Today Norton Internet Security 2008 offered a free upgrade. It did not say to what version. I accepted--foolish, I know, since the last few versions ran bad installations and each required a few hours on the phone with tech support, not just for me but for other people too. I shut down everything else while it downloaded and installed, which happened without incident. Then I tried to reboot and go back to work.
This free upgrade removed the wifi driver, did something that caused the machine to behave like it was wading through molasses even though nothing was hogging CPU, and in general left the machine unusable.
Windows XP was unable to recover to a Restore Point until I booted into Safe Mode and chose a manually created Restore Point.
Now wifi works again, but Internet Explorer hangs before it is even able to accept a navigation entry. I am unable to bring up the Norton Internet Security user interface. Control Panel says the application is there, until I click the Change button--then Control Panel says there is no such software on the system. I have not found a way to get anything except FAQs without the NIS user interface and its Support option. Since the original installation was one of those downloadable autoinstalls, I have no kit to reinstall from if I manage to straighten out the rest of what has been messed up.
What happened, and is restoring from a full backup really my only option?