I received the same errors and contacted Norton support. They spent hours trying to find out why my service wasn't working. They ended up telling me to contact MicroSoft, telling me there must be a problem with my MicroSoft Installer. The Norton rep gave me the phone number for the MicroSoft helpdesk but no one answered the phone.
I dug up all the stuff from when we originally purchased the computer (in 2005) and I used the Norton CD that Circuit City used to install Norton. It was successful and now I've had Norton back for just over a week and everything seems to be working properly.
........I dug up all the stuff from when we originally purchased the computer (in 2005) and I used the Norton CD that Circuit City used to install Norton. It was successful and now I've had Norton back for just over a week and everything seems to be working properly.
I have not upgraded. I’ve had so much trouble with Norton this year that I’m cautious about upgrading. I know the 2006 version works. My live update works so my computer is protected (or it should be). Maybe when I renew in the next few months, I’ll upgrade.
Thought I'd bring you up to date with my problem. I was getting so fed up with it after 4 weeks messing about, and Symantec had started repeating themselves with their advice, I decided yesterday to do a complete backup on to an external 750 Gb hard disk I purchased recently, and return drive C on the PC to factory settings and start again. After reading that it was best to create a password I clicked on the Administrator user account which then asked me for a password which I hadn't got, and couldn't remember ever setting one. I then rebooted thinking it would clear this request but as soon as I switched on I was asked for a password and it was impossible to load the machine without one!
At that stage I thought it better to speak to a professional so rang Medion, the computer manufacturer, and their technician thought a corruption in Windows was causing my problems. We rebooted into safe mode and used the Application & Support Disk to reset the drive. Luckily some time ago I had moved the My Documents file to D drive so all my documents were safe, but of course I lost all my programmes. Still I can live with that and get back what I want from Cds or the Internet.
I should also tell you that last week I tried to do a System Restore to the 30th July (the day before I originally downloaded NIS 2008) but discovered that the Norton Removal Tool had also removed all restore points before the 1st August. I then found that all my Microsoft Office Suite 2007 had disappeared as well.
I don't know what to do about Norton - NIS 2006 ran very well on my machine as did 2007 from March this year, but I don't feel very confident about re-downloading them in case it sets all this off again. For the time being I have downloaded the trial version of EST Smart Security anti-virus and firewall.
In the meantime, I want to say thank you to all of you who took the time to try to help me .
You've included a lot of interesting information, and I'd like to just make a few comments.
I don't believe the Norton Removal Tool is responsible for removing your restore points or loosing your Microsoft Office Suite. You did mention that Medion thought your Windows platform to be corrupted; I would think that to be the culprit.
The only effect that Norton can have on system restore is that if the "Protect My Norton Product" box is checked, then a system restore may not be able to occur - and at that time a message from system restore will say something like: "Your system could not be restored .......". That does not mean that the restore points are gone. One can then uncheck the Norton protection box and easily perform a system restore.
Hopefully at some point you will decide to return to the Norton Products - I have great faith in them. Should you decide to do so, be sure to completely uninstall any other security software first. If you don't, that can cause issues.
I do wonder how my computer could have become corrupted if, as you say, it wasn't Norton which was responsible. It hasn't given me any trouble since I bought it over two years ago. Where could I find the "Protect my Norton Product" box, I haven't seen it, nor have I seen any message like "Your system could not be restored .......". When I went into System Restore it was impossible to move the calendar back to July, the arrow was greyed out and dead.
Corruption can take place due to a variety of reasons. I was my observation that I have never heard of Norton wiping out restore points and an entire Microsoft Office Suite.
System restore points do not stay forever. Depending upon how much space you have allocated for them, you may be able to go back two months, one month or just one week. Once System Restore reaches the specified amount of storage space allocated, it will replace (delete) the oldest ones with the newer ones. That is independent from the "Protect My Norton Product" check box and certainly does not indicate that Norton "removed them".
If the points and dates are greyed out it is because they no longer exist as mentioned above.