I'll try and give as much detail now as I can think of, so I can get my extremely annoying problem solved!
Ever since last Wednesday, my computer has been acting strangly, in that it would suddenly freeze up and become unresponsive. By this I mean that Internet explorer, firefox, google chrome, BBC iPlayer (UK Program) or even Live Mail would effectively crash. If I tried to end the program, it would do nothing and even if I wanted to shut down the computer, nothing happened either. The loading light would stay off, and CPU usage according to the task manager would stay around 6-10%. So the only way I could turn my computer off was to hold down the power button.
On thursday, it rectified itself and worked okay all day, but yesterday (friday) and today it's been playing up again. I've only just realised that both times, I was trying to install programs. On wednesday, I tried to install iTunes, and today I was trying to install my printer software. With both programs, the install stopped half way through, as did all the other programs on my computer. So I had to turn it off manually. On wednesday, I eventually got iTunes installed after 4 attempts, and I have finally got my printer installed after turning off all startup services and going into Norton and turning everything off there. The install proceeded fine this time round.
So why am I blaming Norton? Well, on tuedsday night, I upgraded to NIS 2010 and also downloaded the latest windows security updates. I have figured that if it was a security update, it would still affect my computer even when starting in selective startup mode. So it must have been me turning off all the Norton processes in the Norton control panel. Does this make sense?
Can anyone shed any light on this? Would I be right in blaming Norton, and is there anyway around it?
I am running Windows XP SP3, and NIS 2010. I have had no bother with my computer until I started the install on Wednesday after installing NIS 2010. Hope I haven't bored everyone and that someone can give me an answer!